HIV attacks human cell
Notes and Quotes from Interview with Carlos Del Rio of Emory University in Atlanta. He’s the co-director, the Emory Center for AIDS Research.
–Excited by the pure research.
–What’s unique in this case is the the specific mutation in the transplant where the virus attaches that makes those with it resistant to HIV. The mutation is found in just 1 in 100 people of northern European descent, rare. Not seen in African Americans nor Hispanics.
–This woman is described as ‘mixed race’, with the implication being that a cure based on mutation would not just work for one race and 40% of Americans living with HIV are of color.
–With effective, antiretroviral therapy, you can get somebody with HIV to live essentially a normal life. People with HIV who receive antiretroviral therapy and have the viral suppressed, don’t transmit to others.
–“The goal is to decrease the number of new infections globally to under 500,000. We’re not there and we could certainly be there.”
— To get to 500,000: “identify the people who are at high risk of developing HIV of acquiring HIV, and getting them on, pre-exposable access”
— “…diagnose people shortly after they’re infected linking them to care, getting them in therapy and keeping them, on antiretroviral therapy and suppress for the rest of their lives. So when they age it is healthy aging and they die with HIV, but not of HIV.”
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
