If a group of British scientists succeed, the AIDS-causing HIV virus might soon become curable, and a 44-year-old British citizen could become the first person to be completely rid of the virus.
The breakthrough is a result of a new therapy that targets the disease even in its dormant state, says a report in The Sunday Times. It is the first treatment created to track down and destroy HIV in every part of the body.
Fighting HIV has been one of the greatest challenges facing researchers, because it targets the immune system itself. It entwines with the DNA of T-cells (or T lymphocytes that play a central role in the body's immune response) in a way that they not only ignore its presence, but begin reproducing the virus as well.
Further, the infected T-cells can lie dormant for years, reproducing the virus without detection from our bodies and activating at a time when the immune system is at its weakest.
