HIV Research - The Way To Find Curative Strategies Against Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection

Many researchers throughout the world are urgently looking for a cure for the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV. HIV can lead to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome or AIDS. AIDS is a very serious disease. It can cause many life-threatening changes in ones body that can lead to infections, cancers and other illnesses that can shorten a persons life. In recent years, the disease has become pandemic. This is because it affects people across large areas of the world. Because full-blown AIDS is directly linked with HIV, it is more and more crucial that HIV cure research be undertaken and a cure eventually found for this life-threatening condition.

While there are many researchers in major universities and leading pharmaceutical companies across the world who are diligently working on HIV cure research, as of yet a cure has not been found. One of the major obstacles in finding a cure is in the way the virus can lay dormant during treatment and not reappear until the treatments are stopped. This can present issues in the manner some drugs that are used to block the spread of the disease in the body.

Current treatments that are used are antiretroviral drugs. These drugs work by stopping the cells containing the virus from replicating themselves and causing the disease to move into other parts of the body. Because latent HIV can lie dormant in cells with long life spans such as immune system cells, the virus can remain in the body and avoid becoming completely eradicated. Later, when the treatments are stopped these latent cells can reactivate and start spreading the infection again. This presents a particular problem for HIV cure research work. It involves using strategies that will reactivate the latent cell and then using the drugs that will block its replication. To do this, researchers are exploring the use of drugs such as histone deacetylase or HDAC inhibitors, DNA methylation inhibitors and the cytokine IL-7. These elements have all shown to be helpful in reactivating the latent cells containing the virus in vitro.

HIV has become one of the major health concerns in the world today. For researchers who are trying to develop HIV cure research, the task is challenging but every day they are making progress towards the ultimate goal of being able to cure this virus and the disease it leads to. By the use of drugs that will help in activating latent HIV infected cells that have become dormant, and then following up with an antiretroviral regimen, it is hope that a cure can finally be found.

International Symposium on HIV & Emerging Infectious Diseases (ISHEID): the world leading AIDS experts will gather for the 2012 HIV AIDS ISHEID conference in Marseille, France, May 23-25, 2012. The general AIDS conference theme will be From Universal HIV Testing to HIV Cure.
http://www.isheid.com