Will there be a permanent cure for AIDS in our lifetime?

[Zip]

This is an important subject to me. I am quite sexually active with a number of partners. Safe Sex is not as much fun as natural sex, but I am sure not about to die to enjoy it.

[WesHollywood]

My point here is what has happened to the issue of a cure for AIDS/HIV? Is anyone doing anything? I found nothing but blogs in Google, and no current national news stories. Here is something about a European Aids Conference last May, but everything is out of date, and no new information given. This link is useless. http://www.aids2011.com/en/home And, here is a schedule of global activities on Aids for 2012. http://www.conferencealerts.com/aids.htm

[pellaz]

My point here is ... I found nothing but blogs in Google

you have seen this

could you have predicted this by your current research methods?

[WesHollywood]

you have seen this

could you have predicted this by your current research methods?

Excellent link, and most encouraging. I repost it here. Still where is the followup from the media on this effort? You know I don't even see anti-STD information in GLBT businesses do you?

Thanks for this.

[COLOR="DarkRed"]Stem Cell Transplant Cures HIV In 'Berlin Patient'

The Huffington Post Carly Schwartz First Posted: 12/14/10 01:04 PM ET Updated: 05/25/11 07:20 PM ET
On the heels of World AIDS Day comes a stunning medical breakthrough: Doctors believe an HIV-positive man who underwent a stem cell transplant has been cured as a result of the procedure.

Timothy Ray Brown, also known as the "Berlin Patient," received the transplant in 2007 as part of a lengthy treatment course for leukemia. His doctors recently published a report in the journal Blood affirming that the results of extensive testing "strongly suggest that cure of HIV infection has been achieved."

Brown's case paves a path for constructing a permanent cure for HIV through genetically-engineered stem cells.

Last week, Time named another AIDS-related discovery to its list of the Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs of 2010. Recent studies show that healthy individuals who take antiretrovirals, medicine commonly prescribed for treating HIV, can reduce their risk of contracting the disease by up to 73 percent.

While these developments by no means prove a cure for the virus has been found, they can certainly provide hope for the more than 33 million people living with HIV worldwide. Alongside such findings, global efforts to combat the epidemic have accelerated as of late, with new initiatives emerging in the Philippines and South Africa this week.[/COLOR]

[Zip]

This stem cell research sounds promising. I agree, why is there not more coverage of HIV/AIDS in the national media. Face it, it is hard enough to find a guy you want to jump on, let alone have to worry about all this STD stuff. I am still sowing my wild oats!

[Person66]

As someone from the medical community I do not expect to see a cure in my lifetime because:
A) HIV/AIDS is no longer considered a terminal illness, it's now officially a chronic condition, meaning that with the "new" drugs it can be managed for a lifetime. This decreases interest in finding a cure from everyone. These drugs give a woman with AIDS a 99% chance of not passing it on to her baby and you can take them and have unsafe sex with an HIV+ person and only have a 1% chance of getting infected.
B) it is extremely hard to find a cure for any virus, think of the common cold, they are always evolving, can you think of a cure for any virus?
C) the pharmaceutical companies are making so much money from anti-virals they have no interest in a cure
- the best we can hope for is new and better drugs with less side-effects like Viread

[fredv3b]

Has any viral disease ever been cured? I can't think of any from memory (it's a Sunday morning so please correct me if I am wrong).

Some people infected with Hepatitis B will manage to clear it from their bodies completely others become chronically infected. Anti-viral drugs do increase the number of people who manage to clear it completely, but if I recall correctly, not by much. So I would not class Hepatitis B as a illness that can be cured.

Call me old-fashioned but I really think that developing a vaccine against HIV is far more important than a cure for AIDS. Given that there are numerous viral disease for which we have created vaccines this seems much more do-able. There is one important snag, for all the viral disease for which we have vaccines some people's immune system will cure them, they will then be immune to further infection. The vaccine merely skips the step of actual illness, during which time some may die and others suffer permanent damage to their bodies. There just aren't people who have become infected with HIV and then cured themselves. A second problem is that HIV is a hyper-variable virus, a vaccine would need to be effective against virtually all strains of the virus.

All that said, I still think a vaccine is whether the bulk of research effort should be.

The other thing to remember that a huge number of infections, world-wide, would be prevent if men simply used a condom with any women other than their wives. Sounds so simple doesn't it? Changing human behaviour is bloody difficult.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[OrphanPip]

Fred is right, generally the strategy is prevention not treatment with viruses. The treatment side of things is pretty good lately for HIV, people can live relatively normal lives all things considered. The pharmaceutical industry will continue to develop better drugs because of patent expiration, and to compete for market share. Also, they get huge subsidies from governments for this kind of research, which has secondary benefits for them in drug development.

HIV is not a neglected field of study, after cancer research it is probably the best funded in the life sciences. HIV is by far the most heavily studied virus out there. And it easily trumps the funding most infectious disease research gets. It receives so much funding it has been heavily criticized for the returns available, given some diseases that kill more people (like malaria) get less attention. This is primarily because HIV is in the Western public conscious.

[dfiant]

Has any viral disease ever been cured? I can't think of any from memory (it's a Sunday morning so please correct me if I am wrong).

Smallpox???

[fredv3b]

Smallpox???

Wiped out by a global vaccination program. This is different from a cure, in fact it's better than a cure.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk