\u201cCurrent therapies for HIV do not offer a cure, but they significantly prolong the lifespan of the person infected,\u201d Associate Professor Palmer said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen a person is infected with HIV, they must begin lifelong therapy because the virus is never fully eliminated from the body.<\/p>\n \u201cInfected cells persist for decades, despite antiretroviral therapy. When drug therapy stops, HIV replication resumes within days and will ultimately progress to AIDS.<\/p>\n \u201cNow that we better understand the survival mechanisms of HIV, we can work towards developing more effective treatments,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Antiretroviral therapy is used to stop the virus from replicating in people living with HIV, and it eliminates most infected cells.<\/p>\n Yet, despite decades of treatment, some infected cells persist and are not cleared from the body.<\/p>\n Last year, Associate Professor Palmer and her team \u2013 in a world-first breakthrough \u2013 \u00a0confirmed for the very first time that infectious HIV \u2018hides\u2019 in specific subsets of CD4+ immune memory T-cells to evade detection by the immune system.<\/p>\n This latest research, led by Associate Professor Joshua Schiffer from the University of Washington, shows that it is the proliferation of these latently infected CD4+ immune memory T-cells that drive HIV persistence, allowing the virus to survive even during therapy.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not actually the virus that is reproducing.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is the latently infected cells that proliferate and repopulate declining number of HIV-infected cells,\u201d Associate Professor Palmer said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis cellular proliferation sustains stable numbers of infected cells.<\/p>\n \u201cTherefore, if we can stop these cells from multiplying, or purge the virus from these cells, we could reduce the size of the HIV reservoir.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are now investigating the survival mechanisms of these cells as an ideal therapeutic target.<\/p>\n \u201cMy dream is to find a properly curative treatment for the disease,\u201d Associate Professor Palmer concluded.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/HIV2.jpg\")
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