Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Biotech / Medical : Agouron Pharmaceuticals (AGPH) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: scaram(o)uche who wrote (6058)	4/26/1999 11:17:00 PM
From: Oliver & Co	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6136

Monday April 26 5:01 PM ET Study: Drugs Hiding, Not Curing HIV By MALCOLM RITTER AP Science Writer NEW YORK (AP) - The AIDS virus might be able to hide undetected for 60 years in people taking powerful anti-viral drugs, says a study that underlines a major obstacle to the bold notion of curing AIDS. ''We aren't going to be able to simply wait it out,'' said Dr. Robert Siliciano, senior author of the study. While the drugs can drive the body's supply of HIV down to undetectable levels, they can't attack virus that lies quietly in cells. Such hidden ''reservoirs'' of HIV have long been recognized, and these new calulations confirm the belief that they could harbor the virus for a very long time. Still, ''this doesn't mean a cure is impossible,'' said Siliciano, a professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. It means some additional therapy would have to be created to eradicate the hidden virus, he said. Scientists have already started studying that, as well as the alternative idea of leaving reservoirs alone but revving up the immune system enough to kill any virus that emerges from them. Siliciano also stressed that the finding doesn't mean that people who are keeping HIV at bay with current medication will go on to develop AIDS. ''As long as they stay on the regimen they may do perfectly well for a long period of time,'' he said. The result is ''a caution against stopping treatment or thinking that having an undetectable plasma virus (in the blood) means there's no virus left,'' he said. Siliciano, with colleagues at Hopkins and elsewhere, describes a study of 34 infected adults in the May issue of the journal Nature Medicine. All were taking the powerful virus-suppressing drugs. Researchers sampled so-called ''resting'' CD4 T cells from the patients' blood and used special detecton techniques to find HIV in them. They then estimated how many cells were harboring hidden virus at various times over the course of treatment. From that, they calculated how long it would take for this reservoir of silently infected cells to die off. The best estimate was about 60 years. The result wasn't a surprise, given the results of earlier research, Siliciano said. The period might be shorter in some people, he said. The work ''probably codifies what a lot of us have known for a while,'' said Dr. Roger Pomerantz of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. ''I don't think anyone thought HAART'' - the virus-suppressing therapy - ''would eradicate the virus in patients in a short amount of time.'' Scientists have already started studying how to eradicate hidden HIV in reservoirs, which could include cells in several parts of the body. It's still not clear what's going on in those hiding places. Is the HIV truly not reproducing? Or is it replicating at a very low level and infecting new cells to keep the reservoir going as old cells die? Researchers focusing on the first possibility are looking for ways to stimulate the cells that harbor HIV so that they will produce virus and then die. The new virus would be attacked by anti-viral therapy. Scientists focusing on the second possibility believe that more intensive anti-virus therapy might shut down the low-level replication.