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Fourteen adults who started
antiretroviral therapy (ART) soon after becoming HIV-infected and continued
treatment for at least a year have been able to control the virus for one to
seven years, even after stopping ART, according to French researchers. Lead
author Asier Sáez-Cirión called the success a “functional cure” in which the
virus is still present in low levels; most of the patients had undetectable HIV
blood levels (below 50 copies per milliliter), but some had up to a few hundred
copies per milliliter.
Sáez-Cirión described the study
patients as “post-treatment controllers” in contrast to “elite controllers” who
comprise the less than one percent of HIV-infected people whose bodies are able
to control HIV without antiviral drugs. The study indicates that the
post-treatment controllers developed high viral loads shortly after infection,
which led to starting drug treatment within several months of infection.
Post-treatment controllers also have smaller viral reservoirs and a smaller
proportion of long-lived immune cells. Elite controllers are able to keep virus
levels down, even at the start of infection.
The study did not provide enough
information to identify HIV-infected people who could safely stop ART. Dr. Douglas
D. Richman, director of the Center for AIDS Research at the University of
California – San Diego, emphasized that it is difficult to identify newly
infected patients and start treatment in a timely way. Dr. Max Essex, of the
Harvard School of Public Health AIDS Initiative, stated that current tests for
viral loads are so sensitive it might be possible to take patients off
treatment for a month and restart ART if the viral loads go up sharply.
The full report, “Post-Treatment
HIV-1 Controllers with a Long-Term Virological Remission after the Interruption
of Early Initiated Antiretroviral Therapy ANRS VISCONTI Study,” was published
online in the journal PLOS Pathogens (2013; doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1003211).
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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