The chronic and life long infection of HIV is due to its ability to stay hidden within infected blood cells. These cellular "reservoirs " holds the genetic code of HIV. Thus they remain invisible to our body's immune response and also are not sensitive to anti HIV drugs.
Most of the HIV therapies available for the treatment of AIDS prevents it by dramatically reducing, but not eliminating the HIV infection. Although a HIV patient undergoes a long term antiviral therapy still the reservoir of HIV infected cells continue to exist there by increasing the risk of developing non-AIDS illness like accelerated heart, bone, or kidney disease in the individuals.
The advanced antiviral therapy adopted prevent the AIDS and suppress HIV replication to nearly undetectable levels in over 90% of treatment-naive patients. However if the treatment is interrupted the viral replication again starts back, which makes the patient to continue medicine throughout the life time.
Therefore novel strategies are required to safely kill the HIV infected cells and eliminate the HIV reservoir. The HIV has the ability to establish latency in a subset of infected CD4 T cells and limits the ability of antiviral therapy to reduce the reservoir of HIV.
According to a study conducted at John Hopkins University School of Medicine it has been found that the proviral DNA of HIV has been detected in multiple CD4 T cells immune cells which are permissive of HIV infection. Additionally, there is evidence that persistently infected cells capable of expressing low but detectable levels of HIV protein exist. Thereby acts as a reservoir of HIV.
Most of the HIV therapies available for the treatment of AIDS prevents it by dramatically reducing, but not eliminating the HIV infection. Although a HIV patient undergoes a long term antiviral therapy still the reservoir of HIV infected cells continue to exist there by increasing the risk of developing non-AIDS illness like accelerated heart, bone, or kidney disease in the individuals.
The advanced antiviral therapy adopted prevent the AIDS and suppress HIV replication to nearly undetectable levels in over 90% of treatment-naive patients. However if the treatment is interrupted the viral replication again starts back, which makes the patient to continue medicine throughout the life time.
Therefore novel strategies are required to safely kill the HIV infected cells and eliminate the HIV reservoir. The HIV has the ability to establish latency in a subset of infected CD4 T cells and limits the ability of antiviral therapy to reduce the reservoir of HIV.
According to a study conducted at John Hopkins University School of Medicine it has been found that the proviral DNA of HIV has been detected in multiple CD4 T cells immune cells which are permissive of HIV infection. Additionally, there is evidence that persistently infected cells capable of expressing low but detectable levels of HIV protein exist. Thereby acts as a reservoir of HIV.
