A new HIV treatment might delay the effects of the virus and scientists are even hoping that this will be a breakthrough in curing the deadly disease.
A new medical approach states that if HIV is treated with antibodies it can diminish the intensity of the virus, at least for a certain amount of time, stated a research published in he journal Nature.
The medical technique is a sort of passive immunisation and the procedure implies that in the blood of the infected person, to be inserted antibodies.
There have been done a few tests on humans, and medical experts have all their hopes in the fact that this could be the first step in finding a way to prevent, maybe treat or even cure people infected with HIV.
Until the research will arrive to treat or even cure HIV, there are still many steps to be made, explained the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from Maryland, adding that even so, the results of the study have been more than impressing.
For the experiment, scientists have used four different dosages of a HIV antibody named 3BNC117 on 29 people living in Germany and the United States.
Researchers injected the new treatment inside the blood of 12 people who didn’t have HIV and 17 people who were infected.The majority of the volunteers were men with ages between 22 and 58 years old and around 50% of them were african-american. At the tim of the experiment 15 out of those people were not under an ARV treatment.
The results showed that the infected people who receive the highest dosage,showed a decrease of the levels of the virus for 28 days. The experiment proved to be safe, the human bodies have tolerated it well, and
the side effects weren’t serious.
ARV or antiretroviral medication, are based on a substance that disconnects the process that helps the virus to multiply and enter the body cells.
When it comes to antibodies, the system is slightly different. The antibodies have the ability to grab on to the virus in critical regions of the body. If the antibody manages to block these areas it is impossible for the virus to infect them anymore.Another plus is the fact that antibodies can bring in other immune cells that would fight against the virus.
The estimated cost of this type of treatment hasn’t yet been made public, however such treatments involving antibodies are usually quite expensive.
According to the study, this is a much more expensive HIV treatment, even though antibodies remain inside the body for longer periods of time which means that the treatment could be more effective.
The best part of the antibody treatment is that it might only necessitate a single injection at an interval of a few months. The present HIV treatments have to be taken very day.
The ones who might benefit from this new medical treatment,will be the patients who’s virus showed resistance to the current antiretroviral treatment.This might not be a treatment for all the individuals infected with the HIV virus.
Previous studies have shown that passive immunisation have diminished the levels of the virus in mice and monkeys, even though the results shown on humans didn’t show as good effects.
Until this treatment will be used as another method for treating HIV further studies are needed. The present research is just the first step of the three stages of study, needed for drugs before they can be approved in the U.S. One thing that could happen in further experimenting of the treatment, is that more side effects could come to surface.
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