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American Timothy Ray Brown also known as the "Berlin patient" is an extraordinary case in the race to find a cure for AIDS, as the first patient apparently to be cured of an HIV infection/AFP

World

New research boosts search for AIDS cure

But if the drugs are stopped, the virus rebounds from “reservoirs” among old cells in the blood stream and body tissue. It then renews its attack on CD4 cells, part of the immune system’s heavy weaponry.

Deborah Persaud, heading the so-called Mississippi Child investigation, said early treatment of newborns appears to offer the best hope of attacking the virus before it gets established in these reservoirs.

“Therapy in the first few days of life really curtailed the reservoir formation to the point that (it) was not established in this child and allowed treatment cessation without having the virus rebound,” Persaud, an associate professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore, Maryland, said by phone.

An estimated 34 million people are infected with HIV worldwide, and about 1.8 million die each year.

The virus was first identified in 1981, and until the advent of antiretrovirals was essentially a death sentence, progressively destroying the immune system until the patient succumbed to pneumonia or another opportunistic disease.

Three years ago, Nobel winning French researcher Francoise Barre Sinoussi launched a campaign for a cure — a hope bolstered by the case of a Berlin man whose HIV count dropped to undetectable levels after a bone-marrow transplant for leukaemia.

In his case, the transplanted cells had a genetic variant, called CCR5 delta 32, which thwarts HIV’s attempts to latch on to the cell’s surface and then penetrate it.

The two Boston patients did not have this mutation in their transplants.

But they were kept on antiretrovirals until the donor cells were fully established in their bodies, and this may have helped, suggested Henrich.

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In two other studies presented at the International AIDS Society (IAS) conference, French researchers said patients who began treatment as soon as possible after diagnosis had the best chance of shrinking the viral reservoir and reviving their immune system.

This backs new treatment guidelines published by the UN World Health Organization and strengthens hopes for a drug free life for HIV patients, the French National Agency for Research on AIDS (ANRS) said.

“Given the large decrease in reservoirs in these two studies, it is possible that functional remission, i.e. prolonged control of the infection without treatment, may in time be achieved in patients treated early,” ANRS chief Jean Francois Delfraissy said.

The four day IAS meeting concluding on Wednesday is held every two years.

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