Recently, the first person ever believed to being cured of HIV, was at the front of a campaign to launch a new AIDS foundation in his name.
Timothy Ray Brown, known recently as 'the Berlin patient' went public at the International AIDS conference in Washington, Tuesday 24 July 2012. Reports that he appeared frail but energetic as he denied the possibility that he still has HIV. He went on to say that doctors have told him he is, "cured of AIDS and will remain cured.”
At the moment, scientists have developed more than 20 antiretroviral therapies that can
keep HIV in check, but the drugs have problems. Treatment is toxic and
expensive, and only about half of the world’s 34 million people living
with HIV can get them. Patients must take the drugs daily for the rest
of their lives to keep the virus at bay.
Paula Cannon, a molecular biologist at USC's Keck School of Medicine said, “There’s nothing like success to galvanize the research. People are daring to hope again that with a lot of hard work and
ingenuity, scientists can deliver.”
Elton John, singer who was also at the conference, was reported as saying"Maybe you think I am
naive. Maybe you think I am off my rocker. Here I am telling an audience
of 7,000 global health experts that you can end AIDS with love,"
The two main ways in which the cure will be developed are currently: one, an elimination cure, which would rid the body of all HIV-infected cells.
The other, a functional cure, would engineer a patient’s own immune
system to resist HIV, even if the virus remains present in the body.
Dr. Jay Levy, who co-discovered the AIDS virus in 1983, acknowledged
that even if a cure were discovered, it could take years to become
practical in low- and middle-income countries, where 97 per cent of the
people with HIV live. But right now, he said, finding a cure is like
“the four-minute mile — what we need to do is just show it’s possible...there’s enough creativity out there to find a way of having it applied in all parts of the world.”
Stay Healthy!
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