For a while now, anti-HIV drugs have widely been successful at helping infected people live relatively normal lives. However, data still reveals that HIV infected individuals experience accelerated aging and premature death by up to 10 years attributed to chronic inflammation.
Researchers have identified key factors causing this inflammation, stemming from the lack of ability to control HIV RNA production from existing HIV DNA. This suggests the need for drugs to target inflammation to ultimately improve survival rates and reduce likelihood of acquiring cancers, neurocognitive diseases, and others associated with inflammation. Drugs have been highly successful at taming the replication of DNA and the associated AIDS-complications; however, inflammation is still a serious side effect.
It is quite interesting to see that even through years of immense success at quelling the most serious side effects of HIV which once was a death sentence, problems from the virus’ existence in human cells still very much persist. This underscores the difficulty in testing new drugs and getting people enrolled in trials whilst currently relatively successful drugs already exist. What people would want to sign themselves up for a control group potentially when other efficacious, cutting-edge drugs dominate the market? Perhaps studies will happen in conjunction with other drugs. Only time will tell.
-Sammy
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201030122552.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment