Clues To Long-Term HIV Survival

Presentations at the 10th International Conference on AIDS, held in Yokohama, Japan, have suggested that people who seem to survive for a long period of time infected with HIV yet still remain asymptomatic may hold a clue towards understanding how best to target therapy for the disease.

David Ho, a researcher at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in the USA, said that data from nine men and one woman who have remained asymptomatic for more than 12 years have shown a retention of high levels of CD8 cells. Dr Ho added that when CD8 cells were removed from the blood of these patients in vitro HIV began to grow rapi-dly. Adding new CD8 cells once again controlled the virus. However, he adds that it is still not understood how such individuals remain asymptomatic, and it is not expected to be simple. Providing that the conditions in these individuals can be recreated it should be possible to keep patients symptom-free, he noted.