Denver, USA – The HIV once morest which we fight with drug treatments for lack of vaccines, appeared 40 years ago, the SARS-CoV-2 once morest which we fight with vaccines for lack of drug treatments, appeared 2 years ago.
The two met in Denver (Colorado) in mid-February and on the virtual stage of the famous “Conference on Retrovirus and Opportunistic Infections“, historically devoted to the HIV-AIDS epidemic and opportunistic infections.
This cohabitation is not without interest: many experts believe that the search for an HIV vaccine might be revived by all that we have learned regarding the production of a vaccine once morest the coronavirus. This conference also provides the opportunity to salute the memory of Pr Luc Montagnier died on February 8, Nobel Prize in Medicine 2008 with the Professor Françoise Barré-Sinoussi for the identification in 1983 in their laboratories at the Institut Pasteur of a new retrovirus, the cause of AIDS.
The Conference opened on February 13 in virtual mode for the second consecutive year, bringing together behind the screens more than 3,000 participants, 40% of whom were non-Americans. In the HIV news, we will note the sessions devoted to prevention and in particular to PrEP for which several products are now approved, including TDF/FTC, TAF/FTC, dapivirine vaginal rings and very recently an inhibitor integrase, the long-acting cabotegravir. This greatly outperforms the TDF/FTC dual therapy in two large studies (HPTL083 and 084), which were stopped prematurely.
Another part is devoted to the persistence of the virus in protected sanctuaries without really understanding why some patients control their infection better than others without any viral load being detectable. Today two patients in the world are considered completely cured. In this perspective of long-term cure, the CAR-T cells indicated in malignant hemopathies are under study.
HIV and SARS-CoV-2: differences and similarities…
During the opening ceremony, the Mr. Dan Barouch (Boston) provided an update on the state of current knowledge on HIV-1 (retrovirus) and SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus). The first dates back 40 years, leads to a persistent chronic infection with today 79 million infections worldwide, 36 million deaths, a propensity to mutate and resist which means that no effective vaccine is available. The coronavirus leads to acute infection with today more than 408 million infections worldwide, 5.8 million deaths and limited mutations that have facilitated the production of half a dozen vaccines in less than 2 years. The 2 viruses have a similar mechanism of entry into the cell: SARS-COV-2 via the ACE2 receptor and the Spike protein, HIV via the gp120 and the CD4 receptor. As much in SARS-CoV-2 vaccine research has been crowned with success, as much in HIV the results remain disappointing. The latest Ad 26 Mosaic and Boost GP140 vaccine (humoral and cellular immunity) proved ineffective in the HVTN 705 and HVTN 706 trials. Today the technology acquired with mRNA vaccines might relaunch the search for a vaccine once morest HIV.
Miscellaneous
For the rest, among the bridge topics between HIV infection and coronavirus infection, we will follow communications on the effectiveness of anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in HIV+ patients, maternal-fetal transmission of HIV, SARS-CoV-2 and the hepatitis C virus. Many works are also devoted to the long Covid syndrome and to the Covid of the child. HIV in children is also addressed with the TATELO study, which aimed to assess the benefit of an infusion of broad-spectrum neutralizing antibodies as an alternative to antiretrovirals in HIV+ children treated from birth. Finally, the neurological aspects of HIV infection are not forgotten with a presentation on the interest of the CD4/CD8 ratio as a marker of cerebral lesions and a predictive factor of neuropsychological performance during the first moments of infection.
This article was originally published on MediQuality.net member of the Medscape network.
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