They might have a cure for AIDS?

[Seth]

http://mywebmd.com/content/article/97/104268.htm

I always thought they'd have a cure, but would never annouce it.

[ka50]

Treatment, but not cure. Problem is that they can eliminate virually all presense of HIV in blood, BUT it stays in the brain and in few other hidden regions in the body. Person might even have no viral load, but as soon as treatment is stopped the little ***** HIV pops out again. Cure would be complite elemination of HIV presence.. which is a far cry from what we have today.

[shock_core]

effective treatment is better than nothing

[jc Kyle]

we have never been able to rid a virus from a body after infection. A cold, herpes, HIV, influenza, chicken pox. Viruses are shifty. They attach their viral dna to a cell's dna when under attack. And they HIDE. They lay dormant until a stressor like.. well stress, drugs.. something provoke them to become infectious. But the ****ed up thing is when they become part of the cell's dna.. the cell replicates the dna for it's in it's code.. thus being in every cell of the body. Only remote cures we have are vaccines. They protect the body from viral infection by already having a partial death or fully dead virus injected into the body. Thus antibodies are produced (t-cells) and thus no infection. We can't inject hiv in the human body for even a partial dead virus takes over t-cells. That's another thing that's ****ed up. Viruses only take specific cells. So a virus killing a tobacco plant won't hurt us. HIV attacks are white blood cells (t-cells). Rant.. sorry, I've learned so much about this ****.

Currently the only treatments available are in what doctors call "cocktails". Protease inhibitor, tcells, and i forget the 3rd ingredient. It seriously eliminates nearly all of hiv from the body. That's why magic johnson has lived 12 years with hiv and looks great. But, AIDS will take over *the only difference between hiv and aids is the t-cell count in the body, when the body can't accept a certain number of t-cells per area, then the patient is considered to have aids. Then they die. And they don't die from AIDS, they die from opportunistic infections caused by a depleted immune system. Weird cancers, pneumonia.. i seriously think viruses are here to keep populations in order. They aren't even technically alive! They don't contain a nucleus. All they are is a sulfer casing and a phosphorous interior full of RNA (some viruses use DNA). They look alot like spiders most of the time, and they inject their dna into cells. And since they have such strong promoters (beginning of dna rna sequences). That they FORCE the cell to produce new viruses... god they're sick

sorry for the rant

[jc Kyle]

just read the article.. that's great news.. you could theoretically live a near lifetime with the virus while on meds. That's great... shows you the stinginess of the virus.. when vaccines only offer partial protection. Also, notice that the article parallels what i mentioned. They introduce the vaccine after infection, not before.. damn hiv

another interesting fact.... exposed to air, hiv only exists for 6 seconds... hepatitis? nearly a week

[HAZ-Matt]

Originally posted by jc Kyle:
Thus antibodies are produced (t-cells) and thus no infection. We can't inject hiv in the human body for even a partial dead virus takes over t-cells.

Antibodies are not the most important immune response to viri, nor do Tcells make antibodies.

There are two types of T cells CD4+ and CD8+, which are commonly called helper and cytotoxic respectively. CD4+'s bind MHCII complexes on antigen presenting cells and release lymphokines, causing infiltration of other T cells. If they bind a B cell, the B cells differentiate into clone cells and plasma cells and secrete Ab's. CD4+'s are the cells that decline in AIDS. CD4+'s are important in immunity against viri, but can not eliminate an establish viral infection.

CD8+ are cytotoxic (cytotoxic T lymphocytes) and bind MHCI which is present on all cells. Cells degrade a fraction of the proteins in them and present these on MHCI for inspection. CTL's bind MHCI and if the protein fragment is not from the host, it kills the cell. CD8+ response is the most important in dealing with viral infected cells. They are also responsable for killing a fraction of your CD4+ cells when you are infected with HIV. However since most CD4+'s are not infected when you yourself are infected with HIV, the main mechanism of CD4+ death is due to HIV causing the expression of FAS ligand on the surface, and somehow blocking FASL from binding FAS on the host cell. However, when thses CD4+'s interact with uninfected CD4+'s, FASL binds the other cells FAS and induces apoptosis in the uninfected cell.

One last thing, not all viri integrate their DNA into the host genome.

[HAZ-Matt]

The real reason there is no vaccine against HIV is that it's reverse transcriptase causes a high rate of mutation, and there are just too many different strains that one catch all vaccine has not been developed.