Originally posted by: steppinthrax
Originally posted by: soonerproud
Originally posted by: Feldenak
Originally posted by: soonerproud
Originally posted by: Feldenak
Hey there Sparky, list the virii that have been "cured". Not vaccinated against, but an actual cure. Must be all those closed minded, judgemental people trying to make life difficult for those flu sufferers.
What does a cure have to do with the price of tea in China? The post you quoted said nothing about a cure, but was a statement on social conditions of prejudice and discrimination that lead to unsafe behavior in the gay and lesbian community.
Now tell me how discrimination has caused conditions that lead to the spread of influenza?
Might want to re-read what you wrote.
Originally posted by: soonerproud
We will cure AIDS when close minded, judgmental people quit trying to make life difficult for people who had no choice in the first place on their sexuality.
Looks like you were definately headed down the "cure" route.
For the record, no I don't think there will ever be a cure. Vaccine possibly, but no cure.
A cure does not necessarily mean a total destruction of the virus in a persons body. A cure is giving a person the ability to keep HIV inactive without having to take any more drugs. A Vaccine that does that could be considered a cure.
You seem to know a lot about this virus.
I guess then I've been doing some research.
It seems to me that the HAART combination is quite effective in treating HIV
However, there are a lot of barriers. Such as latent reserves of HIV invected CD4 cells that are not unleased on the body until somehow the immune system is activated. I was reading they were testing with valproic acid to find that it reduced the latient reserves down to 29% in one patient. Which isn't good enough because it needs to be a true 0% for it to work but the HAART treatment could never remove latient reserves.
Every provirus has a trigger that initiates the production of viral products. Herpes, for example, seems to be related to stress and certain signals released when you're stressed out. HIV is a particularly nasty virus. HIV DNA is hiding in a particular type of cell that is "activated" when the immune system senses foreign material.
Unfortunately, it's the activation of those cells that triggers the replication of the HIV itself. So when free floating HIV is detected, and Helper Ts activate to take part in the assault on the virions, the hunter becomes the hunted, so to speak. The act of trying to destroy it leads to it's reproduction. Theres a difference between infected cells (those with virus protein within it) and those cells with viral DNA in the genome. The viral DNA is totally silent, and gives off no sign of its presence.
But in the body, which has billions of T-cells, theres always a number of active cells. Your body is continually under assault, you just dont notice it most of the time until the infection gets really bad and you get a cold, for instance. So no matter how hard you try to destroy the virions in the bloodstream and tissue, theyre always being produced somewhere, somehow.
Understanding that, there could never be a guarantee that even if there were no detectable virus in your blood, even if for all intents and purposes you were perfectly healthy and your immune system could deal with the virus - you could still potentially spread it.
I would hesitate to call anything a cure as long as the possibility for transmission to another person is still there. You might have immunity to a bacteria or virus, but that immunity doesnt come along for the ride when you infect someone else. Your body might have been able to take care of EBV (Mono) a decades ago - you kiss someone who's never had it, and 48 days later, they'll start showing symptoms.
The day may come when we "cure" a virus - but HIV won't be the first.
I was also reading it would take a lifetime to eradicate the HIV virus from the human body??????
What does this mean exactly
You can never eradicate a virus. Your immune system can learn to deal with it (HPV, EBV), but its still around, and you're still infectious. But when your immune system itself is infected, and trying to fight it worsens the problem, I suppose you could say that the virus will be eradicated in a lifetime - your own significantly shortened one.