Researchers make headway on Aids cure

08 Jun, 2014 - 00:06 0 Views

The Sunday News

Thulani Ndlovu
THE HIV virus that causes AIDS could soon be harnessed and used as a tool that improves and extends the lives of people with multiplicity of diseases including against HIV infection itself according to a British medical journal, eLIFE.
According to eLIFE, three medical researchers from Aarhus University, Denmark described adopting the viruses as carriers of designer nucleause proteins, providing efficient targeted gene disruption in vector-treated cell lines and primary cells.

The potential application of such a technique could be used to treat hereditary diseases, as well as HIV itself, writes Aarhus University in a press release on their website.

“Now we can simultaneously cut out the part of the genome that is broken in sick cells, and patch the gap that arises in the genetic information which we have removed from the genome. The new aspect here is that we can bring the scissors and the patch together in the HIV particles in a fashion that no one else has done before,” says associate professor in genetics Jacob Giehm Mikkelsen from Aarhus University.

“So in this way HIV can in time become a tool in the fight against HIV,” Yujia Cai of the research team added.
The president of the Hospitals Doctors Association, Dr Charles Moyo said although he had not come across the journal, any efforts to solve the HIV mystery was welcome.

“I have not read the medical journal, but such a cure would be welcome. I cannot comment any further until I have read the findings myself,” he said.

HIV is notorious for how quickly it mutates, which is yet another reason why researchers have had such a difficult time killing the virus entirely. Despite these challenges, there have been encouraging advances in trying to combat the virus.

Researchers have made headway this year in the search for HIV treatment. In January, the Immunity Project announced it was developing a vaccine for HIV based on the cells of rare “controllers” who are naturally immune to the virus.

A machine-learning algorithm is used to examine the cells of these individuals and then to recreate the same resistance in others.
The project’s creators say that a working vaccine could be made available to the public by 2016.

A preliminary report by the Ministry of Health and Child Care said the number of people dying from HIV and Aids has significantly dropped in the country from a high of 170 000 in 2003 to about 60 000 last year, a development attributed to Government programmes in administering anti-retroviral therapy. The numbers include both adults and children.

According to a preliminary report of the 2013 HIV estimates, the number of adults who died in 2013 has gone down from 50 230 in 2012 to 49 605 in 2013.

The number of deaths among children between 0 and 14 years has also declined from about 36 000 (2003 statistics) to 10 795 in 2013.
About 12 004 child deaths were recorded in 2012.

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