Clues to a possible cure for AIDS
![Clues to a possible cure for AIDS Clues to a possible cure for AIDS](https://i2.wp.com/www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20240727_STP002.jpg?w=780&resize=780,470&ssl=1)
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S.N, July 22 Twenty -fifth international for a week AIDS The conference started in Munich. Though These gatherings The war councils that were in the early days of the epidemic – are no longer the strategy of defeat Human immunotherapy virus It is now highly settled – there is still a lot of fighting to do.
In a report issued with the start of the conference, UndsThe United Nations, which deals with the disease, said about 40 million people are now infected. There were 1.3 million new infections in 2023 and 630,000 Human immunotherapy virusAssociated deaths. But these numbers decreased from 2.1 meters and 1.3 meters respectively in 2010. that year is the basis for a decrease of 90 % in the annual new infections and Human immunotherapy virus-The associated deaths, which experts believe will end AIDS As a threat of general health. Hope is to reach this goal by 2030. On current trends that seem unlikely. But the numbers, mostly, go in the right direction.
Since sub -Saharan Africa was the worst part of the world, most of the effort was concentrated there. This has resulted. New infections have decreased since 2010 by 56 %. Partially as a result, UndsArqam says that for the first time since the epidemic began after more new infections outside this part of the world more. However, the other contributor to this shift was that in three areas – Latin America; Eastern Europe and Central Asia; New infection rates in the Middle East and North Africa increased.
Although there is no treatment currently, AIDS However, it is possible to finish. This depends on two steps: treating the injured already and preventing his transfer to those who are not. The goals help, then to clarify the goals. For treatment, Unds The formula is issued easy to remember “95-95-95”. This translates into aspiration that 95 % of the injured realize that 95 % of this group take anti -virus drugs to suppress their meters, and that in 95 % of those treated (i.e. 86 % of the injured), treatment successfully succeeds in viral pregnancy. Throughout the world, the “trilogy” encourages 86-89-93, with an estimated 30.7 million people that they take anti-virus.
It is important – this is the place where treatment and prevention are associated with – people who take anti -virus medications unlike the way the doctor has minimal viral loads, and they are unlikely to pass the infection. This case, known in this field U=U (Uncomfortable = unacceptable), gives a constellation of preventive methods (such as condoms, vaginal rings of microbes and various preventive drug systems) a better opportunity to work.
Using medications to prevent exposure, is usually called PPEpIt is a particularly promising approach. About 3.5 million people around the world are already taking Truvada or Descovy, the first PPEpS to agree to it. But this is the birth control pills that only provide short -term protection, so they should be swallowed regularly. Long -term cover comes from injection.
The first injection PPEp CAABTEGRAVIR, which was made by Viiv Healthcare and approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDAIn 2021, this gives protection for two months, and an experiment in Uganda showed that it was more popular than grains. The second is LenacAPAVIR, from Gilead Sciences, which makes Truvada and Descovy. The meeting coincided with the publication of complete results from very-1, trial for this in South Africa and Uganda. very-1, which began in 2021 and participated in 5,300 women, showed that she had given 100 % protection for six months. This is seen as a real penetration, and activists called Gilead to be cheaply.
Regarding the issue of treatment, some news was announced before the conference caused special attention. This was the revelation of the seventh individual known to reach a permanent remission Human immunotherapy virus Infection after bone bone transplant to treat leukemia. The bone marrow is the source of the immune system Disk4 R.-Ayal that is being attacked before Human immunotherapy virus. Therefore, in a few cases where a patient with leukemia was also Human immunotherapy virusSave, the surgeons deliberately sought a donor who had a boom in the gene for a R.The protein is called the mixture CCR5 (The virus uses to enter these cells), hoping to treat two patients at one price. This is because of Human immunotherapy virus He finds difficulty infection R.-A horse of people with a mutation CCR5 proteins.
What is special in the latest cases, for the condition of an unknown person known as the Berlin II patient (the first, Timothy Brown, was treated in the capital of Germany in 2007), is that the donor inherited this mutation from only one father, and this means half of it was the relevant protein molecules. In the bone marrow is not confined and thus remained Human immunotherapy virus-friendly. Moreover, the news of Berlin II patient comes after a case was reported to be more than that last year from Geneva, in which the donor was completely natural. CCR5 proteins.
Tust a surprise
All this indicates that something more complex happens. Sharon Lewin, President of the International AIDS Society, which organizes the meeting, is a pioneering light in the search for a treatment for AIDS. She doubts that in the patients who have been treated, preparations for planting aimed at killing the current marrow, as well as the immune response to the new marrow to the old marrow, shrinking the tanks in it. Human immunotherapy virus They hide and give CCR5 mutation of a helping hand.
Such a tank, through a special drug, is something that you already achieve. Along with batches R.Genetically designed to disrupt CCR5, the basis of treatment may form. ■
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