|
|
 |
|
News/Event Item
Chemotherapy May Offer New Weapon in War on AIDS
June 29, 2009
By Rose Hoban
About 15 years ago, pharmaceutical researchers discovered the first anti-retroviral drugs - medicines that can successfully combat HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. As time has gone on, these drugs have been made more potent, and patients who take them live longer.
In HIV treatment, one problem has persisted, says Jean Pierre Routy, an HIV researcher at McGill University in Montreal. Scientists haven't been able to actually eliminate the virus from the bodies of infected patients. But Routy believes his research could show a way this might be accomplished in the future.
Routy says anti-retrovirals do a good job at killing viruses that are circulating freely in the bloodstream. After taking them for a few months, HIV patients have virus levels that are almost undetectable. But if a patient stops taking the drugs, the virus rebounds. That's because even the most potent HIV drug cannot kill all of the viruses in a patient's body. And there's new thinking on why this is so. Routy suggests that the viruses go dormant.
© 2009 Voice of America
For full article, visit:
http://www.voanews.com/english/Science/2009-06-29-voa54.cfm
category: News from Other Sources : AIDS News
contributed by Liza Nanni on 2 July 2009
Global :
recall this item.
|
|
Share
