A study conducted by French researchers reveals that one out 10 patients with HIV can be ‘functionally cured’ if it is diagnosed and treated early.
In trying to explain why HIV is curable, Dr. Andrew Freedman, from the Cardiff University School of Medicine, says, “The presumption is that they’ve started treatment very early and the virus hasn’t spread to so many of the long-term reservoirs and that’s why it works. Whether they’ll control it forever, or whether it’ll be for a number of years and subsequently they will progress and the virus will reappear, we don’t know.”
In the aforementioned study, researchers have been studying the case of 14 patients, known as Visconti cohort, who have ceased treatment with success since the virus shows no signs of returning.
All of these patients were found to have HIV within 10 weeks of being infected, and after sticking to a course of antiretroviral drugs for three years, didn’t require to be treated anymore.
Usually, the drugs are only able to keep the virus in check but this isn’t surprising according to experts since most HIV patients only discover that they have this infection only after it has fully spread throughout the body.
As for the study’s findings, Dr. Asier Saez-Cirion says that 5-15% of patients will be able to control the infection much like some of these patients in the Visconti cohort even if early treatment is able to curtail the number of HIV hideouts.
Although there’s a lot of research that needs to be done, what is clear, according to Deborah Jack, Chief Executive of the National AIDS Trust, is that treatment has to begin early.
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