University Researchers have said that their team is close to finding the HIV cure.
The University Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA, revealed this.
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They said that the cure is focused on targeting infected cells that are dormant in the body.
Wellness Healthcare learned from the health journal Nature Communications; this methodology began in 2017.
The researchers only improved on it to authenticate the HIV cure.
According to the journal, the study aims to kill naturally produced HIV-infected cells by the body’s immune system.
This research helps scientists to completely destroy the virus that attacks the immune system.
The study’s lead author, Jocelyn Kim, said in a press release the study opens a new paradigm for curing HIV.
Jocelyn Kim said:
“These findings show proof-of-concept for a therapeutic strategy to potentially eliminate HIV from the body, a task that had been nearly insurmountable for many years,”
“The study opens a new paradigm for a possible HIV cure in the future.”
According to UNAIDS, 38 million people globally are living with HIV disease.
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Since the 1980s, the UNAIDS revealed that about 36 million have died of AIDS-related diseases.
AIDS is a condition that prolonged and unmanaged HIV condition can lead to.
It is a fatal condition of HIV that often leads to death.
It is understood that antiretroviral medications are used to manage HIV.
However, HIV can become immune to this medication through a dormant cell known as CD4+T cells.
The recent study built on a strategy created in 2017 is called the “kick and kill”.
Mice were used to experiment with the veracity of this medication.
The immune system of the mice was altered to mimic those of humans. They were infected with the HIV disease and given antiretroviral drugs.
A synthetic compound was administered to open the mice’s dormant HIV. However, after this, researchers learned that 25 per cent of the old dormant cells died in 24 hours.
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In this new study, the same compound was used to eradicate hidden HIV-infected cells. Then, the “healthy natural killer cells” were injected into the mice’s bloodstream.
Results found that 40 per cent of the infected mice was healed of HIV.
Future
Kim said her team’s goal is to create a method that completely eradicates 100 per cent of HIV infections in the mice.
“We will also be moving this research toward preclinical studies in nonhuman primates with the ultimate goal of testing the same approach in humans,” she said.
Source: Vanguard
