HIV and Its Possible Cure?

Author: Hanni Yang

Editors: Jasleen Matharu and He-Hanson Xuan

Artist: Jenny Luo

HIV is one of the most debilitating diseases in modern society, being one of the deadliest STDs in the United States However, despite the attention and resources dedicated to finding a cure, there has yet to be a breakthrough discovery Read this article to find out the status quo on HIV treatment

For the last few decades, HIV has been one of the leading causes of death in the United States. Scientists have been trying to develop solutions based on the research they have gathered, however, they have not come up with a treatment that will completely cure one from the virus. HIV was first discovered in the United States in 1981 Until now, scientists only have drugs to control HIV transmission and prevent further growth/spread

Currently, people can only control HIV with antiretroviral therapy (ART) a combination of drugs to oppress the growth of HIV. It can lower the amount of the virus in their body and people who take ART are at almost no risk of passing the virus to other people. However, taking ART does not mean there’s no virus inside the body The virus may still exist inside a group of cells called the HIV reservoir If a patient stopped taking ART, the virus in the reservoir would increase again.

Since a lot of people cannot afford the cost of antiretroviral therapy, there are other more cost-friendly treatments for people to choose from including treatmentfree remission and viral eradication.

Treatment-free remission or functional cure signifies that the HIV virus is controlled without using ART drugs, but it needs to be taken everyday. Therapists are doing research to find ways to manage the expansion of HIV without using ART They use antibody therapies and therapeutic vaccines to control it Albeit these treatments don’t prevent infection, they stimulate one’s immune system to fight the virus.

Viral eradication or sterilizing cure involves a two-part treatment to limit HIVs. The first part would involve drugs that would cause the HIV reservoir's cells to proliferate and express proteins that act as signals to your immune system The second part would be to detect those protein signals, then seek out, and kill the virus. There can be other types of drugs that may be able to seek out and kill HIV. This include histone deacetylase (HDAC)