Is HIV curable?

According to figures from the Institute National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) , the Federal District has the highest rate in the country of people infected with HIV (Acquired Immunodeficiency Virus), 270 per 100 thousand inhabitants.

However, it is possible that this pandemic finds its end, as indicated by an investigation carried out by the Pasteur Institute in Paris, which discovered that through antiretroviral combination therapy during the first stage of infection, the morbidity associated with HIV and its mortality could be reduced.

The study is based on 14 patients, who were diagnosed at the end of 1990 and received early treatment. As a result, specialists discovered that 12 of the 14 individuals who had a symptomatic primary infection at the time of treatment obtained long-term resistance to the virus. Practically, they managed to slow the development of the disease.

HIV infection is typically characterized by sustained viral replication and progressive loss of CD4 T cells, leading to AIDS. Combination antiretroviral therapy suppresses replication and dramatically decreases mortality; but, in most cases, leaving it causes a rapid rebound of the virus.

Published by the magazine PLoS Pathogens, and led by the specialist Asier Saez-Cririo, the study analyzes what happened in the immune system of some patients; however, doctors are not sure exactly how patients control the virus without treatment and why only between 5% and 15% of them do so.

This study sheds light on the possibility of creating a new functional treatment that can cure HIV from its earliest stages. Although this is an idea that adds to other recently exposed, this study is a step more to the cure of AIDS.