Worth another Nobel…

[Witness]

… if it can be generalized.

HIV vaccine therapy lets five people control virus without drugs

FIVE people with HIV are currently free of detectable virus – and daily drugs – thanks to a new vaccine-based therapy.

Although it is early days, one participant has been drug-free for seven months.

Most people with HIV need to take antiretroviral drugs (ART) each day to stop the virus from replicating and causing damage to their immune system. These have to be taken over a lifetime because the virus can hide away in tissues such as lymphoid and gut cells; if ART is stopped, the virus quickly re-emerges from these cells.

Although effective, ART is expensive, time-consuming and can cause nasty side effects.
[…]
While the results are significant, excitement should be tempered. Previous treatments have appeared to “cure” people with HIV only for the virus to later return. For instance, after being born to a mother with HIV, a baby in Mississippi was treated with ART for 18 months. This seemed to cure her of the virus but it returned when she was 4. HIV has also re-emerged months after ART was stopped in two men who appeared to have got rid of the virus after bone marrow transplants two years earlier.

Mothe says that this time might be different. Previous treatments involved either attacking the virus as early as possible or trying to replace the entire immune system to get rid of any dormant virus.

This time round researchers are launching a double-pronged attack: the vaccines focus on priming immune cells to rid the body of active virus as quickly as possible after infection, and the cancer drug flushes out any hidden dormant virus so it, too, can be targeted.

Details: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg ... HIVTHERAPY

[Anaxagoras]

… if it can be generalized.

HIV vaccine therapy lets five people control virus without drugs

Details: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg ... HIVTHERAPY

Another possible breakthrough on HIV. Super antibodies.

New antibody attacks 99% of HIV strains

Scientists have engineered an antibody that attacks 99% of HIV strains and can prevent infection in primates.
It is built to attack three critical parts of the virus - making it harder for HIV to resist its effects.
The work is a collaboration between the US National Institutes of Health and the pharmaceutical company Sanofi.
The International Aids Society said it was an "exciting breakthrough". Human trials will start in 2018 to see if it can prevent or treat infection.
Our bodies struggle to fight HIV because of the virus' incredible ability to mutate and change its appearance.
These varieties of HIV - or strains - in a single patient are comparable to those of influenza during a worldwide flu season.
So the immune system finds itself in a fight against an insurmountable number of strains of HIV.
Super-antibodies
But after years of infection, a small number of patients develop powerful weapons called "broadly neutralising antibodies" that attack something fundamental to HIV and can kill large swathes of HIV strains.
Researchers have been trying to use broadly neutralising antibodies as a way to treat HIV, or prevent infection in the first place.

The study, published in the journal Science, combines three such antibodies into an even more powerful "tri-specific antibody".
Dr Gary Nabel, the chief scientific officer at Sanofi and one of the report authors, told the BBC News website: "They are more potent and have greater breadth than any single naturally occurring antibody that's been discovered."
The best naturally occurring antibodies will target 90% of HIV strains.
"We're getting 99% coverage, and getting coverage at very low concentrations of the antibody," said Dr Nabel.
Experiments on 24 monkeys showed none of those given the tri-specific antibody developed an infection when they were later injected with the virus.
Dr Nabel said: "It was quite an impressive degree of protection."
The work included scientists at Harvard Medical School, The Scripps Research Institute, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
'Exciting'
Clinical trials to test the antibody in people will start next year.
Prof Linda-Gail Bekker, the president of the International Aids Society, told the BBC: "This paper reports an exciting breakthrough.
"These super-engineered antibodies seem to go beyond the natural and could have more applications than we have imagined to date.
"It's early days yet, and as a scientist I look forward to seeing the first trials get off the ground in 2018.

[Doctor X]

Yeah, but Tom Brady says "TB-12" and Alex "Superior Greens" Gurrerrowhatever is t3h aw3s0m3!

And Naturopathy is all natural!




I will pray for you, Anax!

--J.D.

[Anaxagoras]

This is for you then. I'm guessing you probably already read it though

https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/foot ... story.html

What Giselle's husband eats every day

[Doctor X]

Actually, no, I do not read Commie Manifestos!!11!

Seriously, I have heard enough of it--and his book--to recognize quackery. The problem remains that everyone extends "he's right about ____"--like something obvious we all know--to justify utter crap like making yourself "more alkaline!" as well as all of the other disproven claims.

Do not go to Jenny McCarthy for medical/legal/auto advice just because "she's got tits!" nor Tom Brady just because "he throw ball!"

--J.D.

[sparks]

"Do not go to Jenny McCarthy for medical/legal/auto advice just because "she's got tits!"

Spending too much time naked under high intensity photo strobes causes autism .... in the next generation....

2+2=F!!!

Esplainify that sceptics!!