AIDS-HIV Cure: Researchers Getting Closer to Cure; Doctor Warns of Risks in Stopping ARV Medication
Researchers are reportedly getting close to finding a cure for HIV and AIDS.
What makes it challenging to develop a cure for these diseases is that the virus can often go undetectable as it hides by being dormant in CD4 T cells, which are white blood cells that are responsible for protecting the body from infection.
The good news is that it has been announced by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health in Pennsylvania that they have found a faster, more convenient, more affordable, and more efficient method of testing whether or not the virus is still in hiding.
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According to Medical News Today, the study lays out the details of the new test called TZA test, which works by "detecting a gene that is active only when replication-competent HIV is present" and produces results in just seven days.
As to what motivated them to come up with this, Phalguni Gupta, Ph.D, the vice chairman of Pitt Public Health's Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, said, "Globally there are substantial efforts to cure people of HIV by finding ways to eradicate this latent reservoir of virus that stubbornly persists in patients, despite our best therapies."
"But those efforts aren't going to progress if we don't have tests that are sensitive and practical enough to tell doctors if someone is truly cured," he added.
More importantly, after performing the test, it was revealed that in those who seemed to be almost fully cured of the disease, the amount of dormant virus in their cells is, in fact, 70 percent higher than the results of previous tests.
While there is still no sure cure for now, it is advised that those living with HIV and AIDS do not stop taking their Anti-Retroviral (ARV) medication as alternative cure.
According to a report on Vanguard, some individuals have stopped taking ARV drugs as they have begun taking an acclaimed cure for HIV and AIDS. However, as per Dr. Uche Okoro, the project manager of The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Agency for the Control of HIV/AIDS (FACA), "Those living with the disease must take their drugs for life and that is why adherence to counseling was introduced to educate the HIV patients on the need to take the ARV drugs as long as they live."
He added, "Those claiming to have found the cure all over the world have not justified or convinced scientists beyond reasonable doubt on their claim to cure HIV/AIDs."
Okoro also made a reminder that those who have stopped taking their ARV came back in worse conditions.
