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Four-class, five-drug regimen given to monkeys shows signs of producing long-term viral load reductions off treatment
Gus Cairns, 2012-06-29 08:30:00
An animal study (Shytaj) in which standard antiretroviral therapy (ART) was intensified by adding in drugs from other classes has shown signs that it may be possible, using antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) alone, to produce a permanent reduction in the pool of chronically infected ‘reservoir’ cells that are the source of the HIV that reappears when ART is stopped. Reducing the size of this reservoir is seen by many researchers as a crucial component of a possible cure for HIV infection.
The finding, by a team at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità in Rome, was unexpected: they had been testing whether a new monkey immunodeficiency virus called SIVmac251 more accurately mimicked both the pathogenicity and ARV susceptibility of human HIV than previously used laboratory viruses. The investigators hypothesise that the entry-inhibitor drug maraviroc (Celsentri), which blocks ongoing cellular infection by HIV, may be an essential part of this more profound viral suppression.
Their study was part of a series of studies which, in 2011, produced a prominent decline in the number of chronically infected reservoir cells by combining the five-drug ARV therapy with a gold-containing anti-inflammatory drug called auranofin (Lewis).
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