reinforced The last treatment experience of an AIDS patient Hopes that a treatment can be found that will enable patients to permanently get rid of the disease that has infected regarding 37 million people since its appearance in the eighties of the last century.
This is the third time that a patient has been cured of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), following relying on antiviral drugs that not only lower the virus load, but also enable the patient to survive.
This report explains the tremendous medical progress that has taken place in dealing with the deadly virus since its appearance, and its transformation into a chronic condition that can be controlled thanks to the great efforts that have been made.
To close World Health Organization Worldwide, nearly 38 million people are living with the virus and regarding 73 percent of them receive treatment.
“Revolution”
In the 1980s, according to a report “Innovation website”Fears of increased transmission and mortality of the virus reinforced the efforts of scientists to find an effective treatment, and in 1987, researchers discovered that nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) were able to slow the growth of the virus in advanced cases, and later made sure that they were able to deal with it in early cases.
In the 1990s, several scientific discoveries led to the invention of antiretroviral drugs (HAART) that helped stop the growth of the virus, which was then a revolution, and the infection and death rates actually began to decline, and the virus became a controllable condition.
The World Health Organization says that it has become “a chronic health condition that can be managed, which enables people infected with the virus to live long lives in good health.”
“There is an amazing difference between what I felt as a physician and scientist in the 1980s and the optimism I feel today as infections stop and life-saving drugs become available around the world,” said Antoine Fauci, White House adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
But the use of these drugs required taking many pills daily and bearing severe side effects, which prompted many patients to stop treatment, and with the development of research in the field, pills to be taken in lower doses and injections taken at spaced intervals were approved, but the fact remained that no The disease can be cured, according to the website Web Med.
New development
And the efforts of scientists in the field continued to experiment with modern techniques used in previous experiments, such as stem cells and the “messenger RNA” technology, and in the first two patients had already been treated completely rid of the virus.
The recent announcement by researchers in Colorado of treating a female patient using umbilical cord blood revealed the possibility of many patients being cured in the future.
Cord blood is available in a greater range than the stem cells used in bone marrow transplants that have treated two previous patients, and they do not need to be closely matched with the recipient.
The problem with the bone marrow method is that most of the donors in the records are of Caucasian origin, so you need matching patients of the same race and ethnicity as the patient.
As for the affected woman in the last experiment, she is mixed, which means that this method can be applied to a larger number of patients.
Scientists say that the patient has been free of the virus since receiving the new treatment for 14 months, and she did not need to take any antivirals.
And that’s it According to the New York Times An important step forward in the development of a definitive treatment for the virus.
“This is really important from a scientific point of view and really important in terms of the impact on society,” said Dr. Stephen Dix, an AIDS expert at UCLA, referring to the issue of women’s racial background.
Being a woman is also a remarkable development, as women account for more than half of the cases, yet they made up only 11 percent of the participants in treatment trials.
It is also remarkable that the other two patients who recovered from the virus using bone marrow experienced serious side effects due to the entry of a foreign body into the body.
One is Timothy Ray Brown, who was free of the virus for 12 years, until he died in 2020 of cancer, and the other is Adam Castillejo, both of whom obtained adult stem cells from bone marrow from donors who carried a mutation that prevents HIV.
The New York Times says that the first almost died following the transplant, and Castilego’s treatment was less severe, but in the year following the transplant, he lost nearly 30 kilograms of weight and developed hearing loss.
In contrast, the Colorado patient, who declined to be identified, was discharged from the hospital by day 17 of transplant with no relapse, discontinued antiretroviral therapy, and showed no signs of HIV.
“The case confirms that a cure for HIV is feasible and further promotes the use of gene therapy as a viable strategy to treat it,” Sharon Lewin, president-elect of AIDS International, said in a statement.
Promising new technology
Although it was not heard in public circles until following the emergence of Covid-19 disease, mRNA technology has been used for some time in scientific research.
This technology was used in the first two vaccines once morest the emerging coronavirus (COVID-19) approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and they have already achieved great success.
Researchers are studying Now whether it can be used to link to vaccines that protect once morest other viruses. A medical team at Scripps University in California has developed a preliminary vaccine that prevents HIV infection by stimulating the immune system to produce antibodies that stick to the protein used by the AIDS virus, to prevent it from entering cells, but the research is still preliminary.
