HIV-Infected Infant Cured With Early Use of AIDS Drugs • Hacker News Board

Re: HIV-Infected Infant Cured With Early Use of AIDS Drugs

#21

Post by InclinedPlane » Mon, Mar 04, 2013, 1:50 AM UTC

signed0 wrote: post #9

Being fairly young, I can not remember a time in my life when a disease was cured or a vaccine created that significantly reduced transmission. I keep expecting a grand announcement like "AIDS cured" or "Cancer defeated" but there are always so many caveats that it feels like progress isn't being made. I wonder if it was the same way with other diseases in the past, and I am just being important, or if modern day one…

They just don't make the news. HIV is a very hard virus to fight by its nature, and it's only been around for a few decades, but even so progress has been amazingly fast.

Also, HIV is one of the few highly lethal epidemic diseases that continue to exist in the developed world so it receives a lot of attention, however a lot of progress is being made on other fronts.

For example, the HPV vaccine is a big deal, and should lead to a massive decrease of cervical cancers (largely caused by HPV infection). Also, the Varicella vaccine has been added to the standard "MMR" lineup (now MMRV). It's hard to get excited about wiping out "chickenpox" but the vaccine should reduce the incidence of deaths due to complications related to infection in children and especially in adults, as well as shingles and other illnesses related to infection. Rinderpest, a disease of cattle and some other ungulates, has been officially wiped out as of 2011. Additionally, several malaria vaccines are now in clinical trials. If they prove effective it could easily save millions of lives per year.

Re: HIV-Infected Infant Cured With Early Use of AIDS Drugs

#22

Post by carbocation » Mon, Mar 04, 2013, 1:52 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #18

emiliobumachar wrote: post #5

For those of you too young to remember the 90's, AIDS meant sure death in very few years. It was worse than cancer: with some cancers, you stood a chance. How far we've come :)

My understanding is HIV is still more or less a death sentence, with the antiretroviral therapies being relatively effective to push back the final outcome. And there are issues not being discussed here, such as compliance issues with the treatments (adverse reactions and so on) that make patients drop the treatments. It's far from being perfect yet.

It's more of a chronic disease than a death sentence. We all die, and if you push back the final outcome far enough, your odds of dying from something else outgun your odds of dying from HIV/AIDS.

For example, those with HAART-treated HIV infection who have been treated for four years or more tend to die from a non-AIDS-related cause rather than from an AIDS-related one. [1]

[1] = https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20380565

Re: HIV-Infected Infant Cured With Early Use of AIDS Drugs

#23

Post by Mz » Mon, Mar 04, 2013, 1:54 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #18

emiliobumachar wrote: post #5

For those of you too young to remember the 90's, AIDS meant sure death in very few years. It was worse than cancer: with some cancers, you stood a chance. How far we've come :)

My understanding is HIV is still more or less a death sentence, with the antiretroviral therapies being relatively effective to push back the final outcome. And there are issues not being discussed here, such as compliance issues with the treatments (adverse reactions and so on) that make patients drop the treatments. It's far from being perfect yet.

None of us are getting out of here alive. Last I checked, we are all born under a sentence of death.

Re: HIV-Infected Infant Cured With Early Use of AIDS Drugs

#24

Post by ekianjo » Mon, Mar 04, 2013, 2:00 AM UTC

gus_massa wrote: post #13

chimeracoder wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HIV and cancer are particularly tricky. HIV mutates incredibly quickly, which makes it incredibly hard to find a "vaccine", because something that works against one strain probably won't work against the others. The same goes for treatments - most HIV patients have to take a various combinations of drugs (the slang term is their "cocktail") which vary in effectiveness both per-patient and over time. Cancer is difficu…

Another problem with cancer is that is not a single illness, but a family of diseases covered with a single name. Bone cancer is very different of pancreatic cancer that is very different from lung cancer that is very different from colon cancer that is very different from ... Some cure approaches work with all of them, but other approaches are more specific. Trying to eradicate all forms of cancers is like trying to…

Yes and No. You/We should not classify the cancers by "locations". It makes as much sense as classifying a leak in the house as "bathroom leak", "ceiling leak", "stairs leak". There are different cancers happening in different locations of the body and some share the same roots no matter where they start. The fact that they affect a specific organ is not necessarily related to the cancer type itself. There are often several mutations even for a single "cancer location" identified.

Re: HIV-Infected Infant Cured With Early Use of AIDS Drugs

#25

Post by minikomi » Mon, Mar 04, 2013, 2:10 AM UTC

signed0 wrote: post #9

Being fairly young, I can not remember a time in my life when a disease was cured or a vaccine created that significantly reduced transmission. I keep expecting a grand announcement like "AIDS cured" or "Cancer defeated" but there are always so many caveats that it feels like progress isn't being made. I wonder if it was the same way with other diseases in the past, and I am just being important, or if modern day one…

HIV is also fundamentally different and difficult in that it is a retrovirus. This matters tremendously when it comes to eradicating the virus from an infected individual - it's not just a foreign body abusing the cell's replication mechanisms any more.

Re: HIV-Infected Infant Cured With Early Use of AIDS Drugs

#26

Post by revelation » Mon, Mar 04, 2013, 2:10 AM UTC

gus_massa wrote: post #13

chimeracoder wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HIV and cancer are particularly tricky. HIV mutates incredibly quickly, which makes it incredibly hard to find a "vaccine", because something that works against one strain probably won't work against the others. The same goes for treatments - most HIV patients have to take a various combinations of drugs (the slang term is their "cocktail") which vary in effectiveness both per-patient and over time. Cancer is difficu…

Another problem with cancer is that is not a single illness, but a family of diseases covered with a single name. Bone cancer is very different of pancreatic cancer that is very different from lung cancer that is very different from colon cancer that is very different from ... Some cure approaches work with all of them, but other approaches are more specific. Trying to eradicate all forms of cancers is like trying to…

We need to get deeper. Cancer is a direct result from genetic mutations, the very mechanism that enables evolution. It's a (or rather many) mutation that causes uncontrolled cell division while suppressing apoptosis and other mechanisms of the body to regulate cell growth.

Re: HIV-Infected Infant Cured With Early Use of AIDS Drugs

#27

Post by gus_massa » Mon, Mar 04, 2013, 2:26 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #24

gus_massa wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another problem with cancer is that is not a single illness, but a family of diseases covered with a single name. Bone cancer is very different of pancreatic cancer that is very different from lung cancer that is very different from colon cancer that is very different from ... Some cure approaches work with all of them, but other approaches are more specific. Trying to eradicate all forms of cancers is like trying to…

Yes and No. You/We should not classify the cancers by "locations". It makes as much sense as classifying a leak in the house as "bathroom leak", "ceiling leak", "stairs leak". There are different cancers happening in different locations of the body and some share the same roots no matter where they start. The fact that they affect a specific organ is not necessarily related to the cancer type itself. There are often…

You are right, I was oversimplifying. For example, Wikipedia lists 4 more frequent types of brain tumors, and each of them has subclassifications. The origin of the cancer is important, because the cancer cell retain some properties of the original cells, for example if they are affected by hormones. So location is important to distinguish if it started as a breast or skin cancer, but it's not important to distinguish if it started as a hand or foot cancer.

(After metastasis, the location is not important to understand the properties of the tumor, but it can affect the symptoms.)

Re: HIV-Infected Infant Cured With Early Use of AIDS Drugs

#28

Post by freiheit » Mon, Mar 04, 2013, 2:37 AM UTC

signed0 wrote: post #9

Being fairly young, I can not remember a time in my life when a disease was cured or a vaccine created that significantly reduced transmission. I keep expecting a grand announcement like "AIDS cured" or "Cancer defeated" but there are always so many caveats that it feels like progress isn't being made. I wonder if it was the same way with other diseases in the past, and I am just being important, or if modern day one…

Since 1980, we've developed vaccines for:

   - Hepatitis B,
   - Chicken Pox,
   - HPV,
   - Rotavirus,
   - Hepatitis A,
   - and Pneumococcal.

There's also been a lot of improvements in existing vaccines, regular new Influenza strain vaccines, etc...

A lot of those simply got quietly introduced into the routine vaccination schedule for children and the diseases quietly vanished without much fanfare in those countries.

Polio is almost eliminated world-wide now, but that's taken decades.

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/vacc-timeline.htm

http://www.chop.edu/service/vaccine-education-center/vaccine...

Re: HIV-Infected Infant Cured With Early Use of AIDS Drugs

#29

Post by eavc » Mon, Mar 04, 2013, 2:41 AM UTC

signed0 wrote: post #9

Being fairly young, I can not remember a time in my life when a disease was cured or a vaccine created that significantly reduced transmission. I keep expecting a grand announcement like "AIDS cured" or "Cancer defeated" but there are always so many caveats that it feels like progress isn't being made. I wonder if it was the same way with other diseases in the past, and I am just being important, or if modern day one…

The chicken pox vaccine is what comes to mind as a recent one.

Re: HIV-Infected Infant Cured With Early Use of AIDS Drugs

#30

Post by zera_holladay » Mon, Mar 04, 2013, 3:18 AM UTC

emiliobumachar wrote: post #5

For those of you too young to remember the 90's, AIDS meant sure death in very few years. It was worse than cancer: with some cancers, you stood a chance. How far we've come :)

Yes. A close friend of my family contracted AIDS sometime in the 80s. The person died in the 90s. I was a teenager throughout this time.

My parents were scared out of their minds for my health whenever I went over to play (but they let me). They told me to never drink out of a dirty glass, never touch any blood, etc ... stuff that didn't make any sense to me at the time and a lot of stuff that's incorrect.

Anyway, AIDS meant sure death in those years.