“It is premature and potentially dangerous to make claims of a cure from one patient in a trial, especially since this patient has undetectable virus in the blood.”
|||Durban - Could a cure for HIV/Aids be found in the next two years?
The hope is strong as researchers from the UK said a patient in their new trial showed a good reaction to treatment, which could potentially lead to finding a cure.
But world-renowned HIV/Aids expert, Professor Salim Abdool Karim, said it was premature to speculate on outcomes based on one patient. Karim is the director for the Centre for the Aids programme of research in SA (Caprisa) which is based in Durban.
According to Aids Foundation SA and UNAids, South Africa has the highest prevalence of HIV/Aids in the world with 5.6 million people living with the infection, and 270 000 related deaths in 2011.
In the new treatment, the UK’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) said the “Kick and Kill” study would recruit 50 HIV study participants, in which researchers activate HIV-infected cells which were “asleep”.
“By waking them and treating them with an histone deacetylases, which are a class of enzymes, the body’s immune system is encouraged to fight the disease,” explained Mark Samuels, a managing director at the NIHR.
“HIV is a virus infection that is treatable using antiretroviral therapy (ART) which works by stopping HIV from copying itself and spreading. ART reduces the prevalence of the virus in the blood to such low levels, preventing it from being passed on to others, and gives the body’s immune system a chance to recover.
“But ART alone cannot cure HIV. This is because it only works on infected cells that are active, and most cells infected with HIV in the human body contain resting or sleeping virus. These cells represent an invisible reservoir of HIV, and are one of the reasons it is so difficult to cure. If ART is stopped, usually the virus returns,” said Samuels.
Sarah Fidler, professor of HIV and Communicable Diseases at Imperial College London and co-principal investigator on the study, said: “This first participant has now completed the intervention and we have found it to be safe and well tolerated.
“Only when all 50 study participants have completed the whole study, by 2018, will we be able to tell if there has been an effect on curing HIV.”
Responding, Karim said: “There are several studies, including human clinical trials, testing different approaches to eradicating HIV from the viral reservoir. This particular trial is one of many currently in existence. The outcome of this study is not available yet.
“It has quite a way still to go before the results of the trial will be available. The study team’s results at this time is one patient who completed the test therapy but who is still in follow-up in the study.
“Hence, it is premature and potentially dangerous to make claims of a cure from one patient in a trial, especially since this patient has undetectable virus in the blood, which is to be expected as the patient is on antiretroviral therapy.”
Karim explained that previously a baby from Mississippi, in the US, was thought to have been cured after three years of follow-up, only to find she still harboured the virus.
“A patient in Germany who had a bone marrow transplant has no evidence of the virus. He may be cured but it is not possible to confirm this categorically at this stage.”
Independent on Saturday