Mar 05 2013
HIV Cure “Game Changer”
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13 Responses to “HIV Cure “Game Changer””
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Interesting. I wonder, if someone were infected with HIV and then immediately got aggressive ART, would they be cured in the same fashion? I know that’s a very speculative question given that all we have right now is a hypothesis explaining a single incident, but HIV is a subject I know very little about except in the broadest strokes. I also know that people generally don’t find out that they’re infected with HIV until much later when AIDS presents, so even if such a treatment were effective, it wouldn’t get used very often.
Thank you for framing this story properly. It seems that a lot of the headlines say things like:
Doctors “cure” HIV
without explaining the quotation marks.
Also, it seems to me there is an ethical dilemma in this story- remember, this “treatment” was basically a mother who (for one reason or another) stopped bringing her HIV infected child in for treatment. How can you ethically design a study that is basically the gold standard treatment for 1.5 years and then no treatment at all. The details of the case need to be rigorously dissected before that can be done.
http://www.thecollapsedwavefunction.com/2013/03/scientists-have-not-cured-hivaids.html
“Interesting. I wonder, if someone were infected with HIV and then immediately got aggressive ART, would they be cured in the same fashion?”
There is something called post exposure prophylaxis (PEP) which is really similar what you are describing. Most commonly this is described in healthcare when a person has potential exposure to HIV inadvertently through a “needle stick,” for example, although it could be used in other situations in which a person is exposed to the HIV virus outside of healthcare. Regimens vary, but generally a person is on a given regimen for 4 weeks. This does significantly reduce the rate of infection. An important difference is that PEP is viewed as preventing an infection from taking hold rather than treating an infection early as in the case described above, although the mechanism described may be the same.
Excellent post: clear explanation, good context, important points highlighted.
Please forgive one nit-pick: suggest sed s/”cannot be underestimated”/”should not be underestimated”/
exactly! as soon as I read it, I quickly went over to facebook and put up some basic cautionary statement about the NPR article to this basic degree…
its so damn annoying these headlines…do they not know that many people pretty much only read headlines and short blurbs….argh
I think the analogy to PEP makes more sense than “cure”…as I understand, it is thought that this early, the virus has not set up in CD4 cells fully establishing what Dr. Novella calls “resevoirs”….thus allowing the “cure”…..im wondering if this will now become a standard of care for kids being born from mothers with HIV, even in addition to current prenatal care standards for HIV infected mothers?
The real “cure” will be when we can take an average patient and treat them in some way to “functional cure”….then we will have a “cure”….this is however a breakthrough for alot of children, particularly in Africa…
And what if later (assuming the child indeed is ‘cured’) the antiviral treatment at that age causes cancer? If i had the choice i’d take hiv over cancer anyday.
How can you be sure that the tiny viral strands of RNA or DNA might not become neoplasms in the blood at later stages of life?
“And what if later (assuming the child indeed is ‘cured’) the antiviral treatment at that age causes cancer? If i had the choice i’d take hiv over cancer anyday.”
***If*** you had that choice….
I’m curious if anyone heard the Talk of the Nation coverage of this story on NPR. It was good discussion overall until the last five minutes of the program when a caller informed the host that megadoses of Vitamin C could cure AIDS but it wasn’t being published. I didn’t bother listening to the response but now I’m curious what I missed.
being that we have only 2 documented “cures” and neither of which as I recall had anything to do we know of with Vitamin C….
PS – a facebook friend (old high school buddy) who is a chiropractor (a “straight”) told me about groundbreaking experience in africa these days with chiropractors treating and even curing cancer….even had a website to “prove” it
While I’m pretty sure ART doesn’t cause cancer, I was under the impression that the neurological effects of ART on adults still haven’t been ferreted out. Painful peripheral neuropathies, motor coordination difficulties and mild to moderate cognitive dysfunction all seem to crop up in adult patients maintained on ART, and I thought there was some debate as to whether these symptoms were a result of early infiltration of HIV into the CNS or some nasty side effect of the drug. Given that the child/test case is already difficult to follow up with, how can long term effects of high doses of ART early in life be tracked? Was this even remotely ethical to try in the first place?
“It was good discussion overall until the last five minutes of the program when a caller informed the host that megadoses of Vitamin C could cure AIDS but it wasn’t being published. I didn’t bother listening to the response but now I’m curious what I missed.”
The topic of vitamin C introduced by the was completely ignored by both interviewer and interviewed. I was disappointed there wasn’t an immediate slap-down.
What is it with vitamin C? We all know that it does not cure a cold (sorry Linus). Here in Australia we have quack vets who insist that vitamin C will cure snake bite. Given the toxicity of our snakes, I certainly would prefer an appropriate antivenom than vitamin C if I was bitten. Sadly there is a long list of diseases that are cured very effectively by vitamin C, in the world of woo that is!