Tuesday, August 3, 2021

HIV: Defeated Naturally By A Human's Immune System

 This HIV/AIDS Specialist Explains Its Similarities — And Differences — To  COVID-19

In this article, it discusses multiple cases of people who naturally cured their own HIV. In the past, there has been two cases where people have been cured of HIV when receiving a bone marrow transplant, but now we have seen someone cure it with their own immune system. A patient who had the virus, eventually showed no functional HIV copies in any of their cells, even though they still had some nonfunctional copies of the virus, it suggests that some people's immune systems can eliminate the virus on its own like usual. Another patient, only had one functional copy out of 1 billion blood cells, and it was stuck in a genetic prison, which can hold the key to controlling the virus because they did not need antiretroviral drugs. In understanding the extensive nature of this, the first patient had undetectable levels of the virus without drugs for 24 years.

Studying their immune systems on how it fights the virus, could change all treatments of HIV as we know it and could lead us to cure, but it is still a huge question right now.

Links:

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/hiv-immune-system-elite-controllers

https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/basics/whatishiv.html


3 comments:

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  2. This is exciting news! I hope that more research will go into how peoples’ immune systems can eliminate HIV on their own. I agree that by studying how the human system can naturally get rid of HIV, treatment for HIV can change.

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  3. Great post! This is so incredibly interesting. It's crazy to think how strong our immune systems are. It's also insane how some people have very strong immune systems, while others may have weak immune systems and it truly has nothing to do with the person at all. A person with multiple health conditions can have a stronger immune system to fight off a virus, than someone who has no health issues. It all has to do with how our body reacts to different environments.

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