"Asier Sáez-Cirión of the Pasteur Institute's unit for regulation of retroviral infections in Paris analysed 70 people with HIV who had been treated with antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) between 35 days and 10 weeks after infection – much sooner than people are normally treated.
. . . .
"Most of the 70 people relapsed when their treatment was interrupted, with the virus rebounding rapidly to pre-treatment levels. But 14 of them – four women and 10 men – were able to stay off of ARVs without relapsing, having taken the drugs for an average of three years.
. . . .
"On average, the 14 adults have been off medication for seven years. One has gone 10-and-a-half years without drugs. 'It's not eradication, but they can clearly live without pills for a very long period of time,' says Sáez-Cirión."
Any time I hear of someone not finding that an HIV infection turns into an early death after debilitating illness, I'm glad to hear the news. And if some commonality of those patients can be discovered that provides a clue how better to treat other patients, so much the better. But those odds (the majority of the patients who ceased treatment finding their infections rebounding back to acute clinical disease) are still discouraging. For AIDS, an ounce of prevention is still worth a pound of cure. The cases described here sound less like a "cure" than the case of the baby from Mississippi reported earlier, as these patients still have detectable HIV infections, just not infections currently resulting in clinical disease.
"Asier Sáez-Cirión of the Pasteur Institute's unit for regulation of retroviral infections in Paris analysed 70 people with HIV who had been treated with antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) between 35 days and 10 weeks after infection – much sooner than people are normally treated.
. . . .
"Most of the 70 people relapsed when their treatment was interrupted, with the virus rebounding rapidly to pre-treatment levels. But 14 of them – four women and 10 men – were able to stay off of ARVs without relapsing, having taken the drugs for an average of three years.
. . . .
"On average, the 14 adults have been off medication for seven years. One has gone 10-and-a-half years without drugs. 'It's not eradication, but they can clearly live without pills for a very long period of time,' says Sáez-Cirión."
Any time I hear of someone not finding that an HIV infection turns into an early death after debilitating illness, I'm glad to hear the news. And if some commonality of those patients can be discovered that provides a clue how better to treat other patients, so much the better. But those odds (the majority of the patients who ceased treatment finding their infections rebounding back to acute clinical disease) are still discouraging. For AIDS, an ounce of prevention is still worth a pound of cure. The cases described here sound less like a "cure" than the case of the baby from Mississippi reported earlier, as these patients still have detectable HIV infections, just not infections currently resulting in clinical disease.