Bringing HIV Out of Hiding

Whenever I see Magic Johnson, I marvel at the powerful HIV medication available today. He's still strong and vibrant, even though the former professional basketball player has lived with HIV for over twenty years.

While the AIDS cocktail is a powerful mix of drugs, unfortunately, it still isn't a cure, because there's a hidden pool of HIV-infected cells that keeps the virus in the body. If scientists could activate these cells somehow, they might have a shot at eradicating them.

Well, a group of researchers just found a way. It helps to understand that when HIV infects the CD4+T white blood cell, a copy of its genetic information is permanently inserted in the cell genome. Ironically, CD4+T white blood cells are what fight off viral infections in our bodies.

When some of these infected T-cells revert to a resting state, the virus inside goes dormant. Anytime these infected T-cells are reactivated, the virus inside triggers a new round of infection. That's why HIV patients stay on drugs for life.

In the new study, a drug called Zolinza showed it could activate these dormant cells. Researchers gave Zolinza to six HIV-infected men on drug therapy. They all showed a five-fold increase in the amount of HIV in the cells. This means the latent HIV were activated making it more likely that the immune system will kill off these infected cells.

If you're wondering whether the extra HIV production in the cells made the patients sicker, it didn't, because the viral load in the blood did not go up. They were all on HIV drug therapy. This latest discovery offers for the first time in years, a real shot at a cure for AIDS.