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HIV-Infected Infant Cured With Early Use of AIDS Drugs

bloomberg.com

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

#31

Post by zera_holladay »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #15
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 :)

In more ways than one. It's taken decades if not centuries of study of other diseases to understand them and to develop treatments, and just as much time for treatments to have an impact on incidents of the disease. The study of HIV/AIDS has really shown off how far modern medicine and medical research has come. We were able to understand the disease in a matter of years, and develop some crude but effective treatmen…

It is remarkable.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_White. There were competing social forces too.

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

#32

Post by OGinparadise »

Those researchers also were unable to find any trace of the virus, prompting them to determine the baby had essentially been cured.

I am hoping for the best, it would a gift of life for millions, and drug cos can't hold this even if it cost them billions to make. Horrible PR and all.

However, could the virus still be there but under the test's threshold?

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

#33

Post by largesse »

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…

Sadly, there isn't any money in curing diseases. Pharmaceutical companies make money on recurring treatments.

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

#34

Post by kingkawn »

hakaaaaak wrote: post #3

"With no signs of the virus for 10 months..." Does this mean that the virus could still be incubating in cells and some sort of stressor could cause the virus to come out, similar to those that have had Chicken Pox getting Shingles later in life? If so, is it really a cure? To me, a vaccine that has passed all trial stages and works almost 100% and w/few side effects is a cure. I don't want to belittle this miracle,…

Varicella Zoster Virus is a true latent infection. HIV is constitutively active and never truly latent in the sense that it goes into dormancy. The virus is constantly replicating and being released, the only thing that causes it to assume what looks like latency is taking drugs on a daily basis. those drugs do not address the virus that is within cells, only preventing that virus from spreading and causing AIDS.

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

#35

Post by napoleond »

tokenadult wrote: post #2

The treatment details from this interesting article and from the Guardian article http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/mar/03/us-doctors-cur... and New York Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/health/for-first-time-baby... just submitted to HN http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5315660 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5315673 make clear that this is a very unusual case. The baby's HIV infection was…

"I remember all too well when AIDS was a sure death sentence."

There was an excellent documentary released last year about the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 80s and 90s, which I can't recommend highly enough. It's deeply interesting and eye-opening on several levels: http://surviveaplague.com/

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

#37

Post by lake99 »

dyno12345 wrote: post #19
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…

Malaria hasn't been cured but we have much better anti-malarial drugs now. Same for HIV.

Who told you that malaria has no cures? I've had malaria three times, and was cured each time.

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

#38

Post by machbio »

tokenadult wrote: post #2

The treatment details from this interesting article and from the Guardian article http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/mar/03/us-doctors-cur... and New York Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/health/for-first-time-baby... just submitted to HN http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5315660 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5315673 make clear that this is a very unusual case. The baby's HIV infection was…

I do have the same opinion, It seems that like a miracle to me - it is not backed by hard evidence.. for any scientist it will feel like just another case of "Black swan"..wrote about.. http://www.machb.io/2013/its-hyped-up/ Being a Biologist, the viral infections and its treatments are as vague and treatments are not reproducible..

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

#39

Post by signed0 »

freiheit wrote: post #28
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 almos…

That's uplifting to know! I've had several of those vaccines, but I didn't realize that they were developed so recently.

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

#40

Post by tommorris »

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…

There is a lot of progress being made on HIV/AIDS.

How to tell? Speak to any gay man who lived through the 80s and early 90s. In every reasonable sized gay ghetto, there were funerals every week for people dying of AIDS-related diseases.

Now there are far more treatment options: if one knows they've been exposed, a month-long PEP regimen can stop one from becoming HIV+.

Truvada has been approved by the FDA, which can reduce the risk of transmission by between 44% and 73% - this can be used to reduce the transmission rate for highly sexually-active MSM populations, and can also be a second line of defence for (both heterosexual and gay) HIV negative partners of HIV+ people (because condoms can break).

That there is new development on a possible route to reduce mother-infant transmission is exciting.

And the other day I saw this story - http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/02/could-... - redesigning needles could dramatically reduce transmission among IV drug users.

There won't be a grand announcement of "AIDS cured". What there will be is lots and lots of little things: improved public health messaging, improved drugs, more prophylaxis/vaccine research, lower prices for drugs and so on. We've come an enormous way already on HIV/AIDS. That there are people who were diagnosed in their 30s who are now living into their 60s or 70s is a huge improvement from people being diagnosed and dying within a year or two.

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