30-Year-Old Woman Whose HIV Vanished Gives Hope For AIDS Cure
NDTV
Progress against AIDS over the past two decades has inspired a commitment by United Nations member states to end the epidemic by 2030.
All signs of HIV have disappeared in a young woman who was diagnosed with the virus that causes AIDS in 2013, researchers said, raising hopes that she may be one of a handful of people worldwide who has permanently fought off the infection.
The 30-year-old mother, originally from the city of Esperanza in Argentina, has the clinical features of an HIV "elite controller," meaning her infection has been undetectable for years. It didn't reemerge even after she stopped taking powerful drugs to treat it, which is what normally happens, researchers said in a studyslated for publication in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The virus also doesn't appear to have integrated into her DNA, creating what is known as a provirus, and extensive testing failed to turn it up anywhere. It's possible that she has experienced what is known as a "sterilizing cure," meaning she is no longer carrying a replicating form of the virus, they said.
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