AIDS cure hopes dashed

One of the most worrying and depressing features of the AIDS virus is that it appears to leave its victims infected, and able to infect others, for life. So there was great excitement back in March when it appeared that a little American girl, born with the virus, had been cured by retroviral drugs.

These medicines are able to keep the virus in check, but it had always seemed that once treatment stopped, the disease would advance again. Then along came the ‘Mississippi baby’ who was treated within a few hours of birth, with apparently dramatic results.

The shattering of these hopes with the reappearance of the virus in the four year old has been "obviously disappointing" in the words of Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the USA’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.  

The world has made progress on reducing the number of people newly infected with AIDS. In 2012, the figure was 2.3 million, down by a third since 2001, but that still leaves more than 35 million people across the world living with the disease.

AIDS - the German Patient

When I first reported on AIDS in 1985, it seemed like a death sentence for those diagnosed with the disease.   Then along came antiretroviral drugs which allowed people to live with the illness provided they could afford the medicines.   Now comes real hope of a cure.

Last month’s International AIDS Conference in Washington DC reverberated with talk about a man from Berlin named Timothy Brown, who was already infected with the HIV virus (which causes AIDS) when he underwent radical treatment for the leukaemia from which he also suffered – namely, the complete destruction of his immune system.

To provide him with a new system, his doctor found a donor with a rare genetic mutation which gives immunity to HIV infection.   Then he treated Mr Brown with bone marrow cells from the donor.   After this, the HIV virus seems to have disappeared from Mr Brown’s body.

The treatment would be too expensive and too risky to try on a large scale, but it is one of a number of signs that a cure may be possible.   In the meantime, the disease still managed to kill 1.7 million people last year.