Source: hiptoro.com
Cure for HIV/AIDS is under research for so many years and in meanwhile antiretroviral therapy (ART) treatments are discovered which could suppress the virus to a very low level and let infected people live a prolonged life. However, it has been more than two decades since the year 1996 when ART meds were developed and we still don’t have any permanent cure for HIV and AIDS.
While the modern drugs have been able to limit the virus growth and suppress it to a very low level, some of the dormant virus can sleep for years in cells and can come out and re-infect the patient and cause damage. It is why we need a permanent cure that can kill the virus for once and all, curing the HIV-AIDS disease permanently.
Cure for HIV by Smoking Out the Virus
Antiretroviral and the other modern drugs are only temporary solutions and we need to create an actual cure that would remove the viruses from our body completely. It is because the infected people after entering middle age show side effects including inflammation caused by the tiny amounts of HIV present in the blood, which is why doctors are looking for a viable cure.
Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s (NTNU) Center of Molecular Inflammation Research (CEMIR) had found a new way to flush out the HIV virus. The method involves activating the virus so that it can start to replicate, hence making it visible to the immune system and thereby providing a way to kill it for permanent.
Research for Curing HIV holds Promise
Hany Zakaria Meås, a postdoc at CEMIR said, “It is the current idea for a cure. We are planning to activate the cells which are hiding away so that we can kill them by giving medicine that protects cells from infection. There will be more virus produced making it easier to spot them and kill them at the source.”
Although the initial research didn’t succeed in the trials, there is still promise to the cure. The scientists and researchers are working on other methods and new mechanisms to reverse HIV latency and cure the epidemic.