Word: hiv
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...sounds so hopeful. Why don't scientists say at the very least that they're close to the cure? For the same reason that Ho did not promise the crowd in Vancouver that he could eliminate HIV from people in the later stages of the infection. Researchers know that after years of infection, there isn't a hiding place in the body that the virus hasn't penetrated. A cure must do much more than clear HIV from the bloodstream. It must remove the virus from the lymph nodes, the brain, the spinal fluid, the male's testes and everywhere...
Some of the men have been treated for more than a year. None of them show any trace of HIV in any of their blood. Ho has not forgotten, however, that zero does not always equal zero. He and Markowitz are looking for pockets of virus in the lymph tissue, the semen and the spinal fluid...
...still a chance that bits of the virus, called proviral dna, are lodged in the chromosomes, beyond the reach of even the most powerful drugs. Ho has studied these vestigial snippets of genetic information and believes they are defective and cannot give rise to a new generation of HIV. Other scientists are not so sure. The only way to find out is to stop the medication and see if the virus comes back...
...body in a matter of days, forcing the patient to start the long treatment process all over again. But at least one of Ho's patients has agreed to stop taking his drugs in another year or two--after his doctors assure him that tests show no evidence of HIV in his lymph, semen, spinal fluid or elsewhere in his body. When he does, we will know, probably within a few weeks, whether the virus has returned or whether it is gone for good...
...both in the quest for an effective treatment and in the search for a way to prevent infection in the first place. In the flush of the new optimism, some scientists are more hopeful about the prospects for gene therapy, which could possibly make the immune system impervious to HIV attack. Another promising line of research centers on a group of molecules called chemokines, which may one day be used to shield cells from HIV. Other scientists, including Ho, are intensifying their search for a vaccine. Two weeks ago, the nih increased its budget for AIDS-vaccine research...