Optimism on AIDS Cure Before 2020

Ahead of the start of the 18th International AIDS Conference in Vienna on Sunday, renowned HIV researcher Sharon Lewin said she believes a cure for the disease will be found within five or 10 years.

As head of the infectious-diseases unit at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, Lewin is concentrating her efforts on waking, then killing, HIV after it goes dormant in the body. "The main reason we can't cure HIV is because it goes into a hiding spot in the body and it goes to sleep while we're treating the patient with drugs, but when we stop the drugs the virus wakes up." "We are looking at how the virus gets into the cells, why it stays asleep and how we can wake it up again," said the professor. "We will have a high-tech solution but then we will need to make it simple enough and cheap enough to be delivered to a lot of people."

The Friends of AIDS Foundation is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV virus. To learn more about The Friends of AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.


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