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HEALTH - To this day it is still no cure or vaccine for HIV / AIDS, a disease that affects about 37 million people in the world. But, there is reason for hope because of the research that is done more and more promising.
Improved treatment and prevention of HIV infection are increasing. According to the World Health Organization, in 2015 the death rate for this disease is much lower in the last 20 years. New HIV infection rates also reached its lowest point since 1991.
Therapeutic advances HIV / AIDS was not least because of access to antiretroviral (ARV) drugs more widely. By 2015, at least 2 million people taking ARVs, the highest figure in the history of this disease.
On AIDS Day 2016, update your knowledge will be a significant discovery, including medications and vaccines being developed to combat HIV / AIDS.
1. HIV Vaccine
The HIV virus can not be beat by the human immune system because it has the ability to mutate rapidly to changing surface proteins that are not detected.
In the latest discovery, antibodies or proteins produced by the body's immune system to destroy pathogens, capable of neutralizing many variants of HIV strains.
Previously, the most powerful antibodies were identified only able to neutralize 90 percent of HIV variants. While the latest research, N6, name antibodies that can neutralize up to 98 percent. The team of scientists from the National Institute of Health N6 succeeded in isolating antibodies from the blood of a person infected with HIV.
Of the antibody, the scientists will develop it into a vaccine to prevent HIV transmission.
Other scientists who develop an HIV vaccine has even reached the stage of human trials. In the near future, the vaccine will be tested in populations in South Africa which has a high HIV infection rate in the world.
2. Treatment success in monkeys
An experiment vakin combined with substances that can stimulate the immune system is able to suppress SIV (the monkey version of HIV) reached the level of undetected, as well as ARV treatment in humans.
Exciting discovery was found in three out of nine monkeys who received the combination therapy. Even so, experts still find it promising results for HIV drug development in the future.
Later, when the drug was successfully realized, one can get the same treatment and the level of virus in the body can be suppressed to undetectable, without having to take ARVs every day.
3. Drugs that already exist can suppress HIV
In another experiment, still to monkeys, scientists from the UK managed to suppress SIV to undetectable levels with antiretroviral therapy supplements with antibodies that are similar to drugs vedolizumab which already exist for other diseases.
In general, HIV levels climb again within a week after treatment was stopped, but of 8 monkeys get this trial, the levels of the virus remains undetected until 2 years.
The good news, vedolizumab antibody drugs that have long circulated and are usually prescribed to treat gastrointestinal diseases. Vedolizumab works by preventing immune cells from entering the intestine, the body part most susceptible to damage during the early stages of HIV infection.
Based on these results, the researchers began testing in humans vedolizumab.
