I will try to answer. The reason that we are saying that present combo therapies are not a cure are based on the studies done by Dr. Ho first, where he found that if HIV only infected T cells, due to their life span, you could hypothesize that it would take 2-4 years of continuous complete inhibition of replication to cure someone, until the pool of CD4 cells had cleared. However, the patients that they have been studying, still show virus in lymph tissue more than 2 years later.
Furthermore, a recent study found a family of macrophages with a much longer life span that T cells, and the extrapolation has been pushed to 10 years of complete, inhibitory treatment, penetrating in all body compartments.
Two more things, first you must understand that HIV is a disease of the lymphoid system, and second, the question which is still unanswered, does HIV infect any permanent cells in the body, ie. cells that do not replicate, just like HSV does. |
