At least 35 million people around the globe have in their bodies the virus of the dreaded and deadly disease known as AIDS. HIV can attack the body's defense cells, and unfortunately, no matter how hard doctors try, there is still no effective way to treat it, which causes the deaths of up to 1.7 million patients annually.

It turns out that the AIDS virus is evolving so fast that it is very complicated to establish a single drug to fight it. Instead, one must face the threat with more exotic treatments in patients who have been carrying HIV for a longer time or try to expel the virus before it has a chance to act in recent cases. Nevertheless, scientists have made huge strides over the past few years in finding a way to fight the virus more effectively so that it can completely neutralize it.

Of course, with the sheer number of people fighting HIV, finding a permanent cure could surely be viewed as one of humanity's greatest achievements. However, this “cure” must be safe for patients as well as comprehensive and it must also be possible to replicate the measures to be applied to other patients.

And if we are to eradicate the human immunodeficiency virus once and for all, it is essential that AIDS prevention is increased and addressed in the most recent stages as possible.

Striding

It is not from today that there are already patients who have won the battle against AIDS. In 2007 Timothy Ray Brown, a 40-year-old HIV-positive man, received stem cell treatment to treat acute myeloid leukemia. Luckily for Brown, who was already in a state very near death, the cells used in his treatment were received from a patient with a genetic abnormality that made him resistant to HIV infection.

Thus, during the next 20 months of treatment, without retroviral drugs, virus levels in the blood, spinal cord and Brown's intestines became undetectable. Therefore, in 2011 it was confirmed that the patient was officially cured of HIV contamination. Of course, Brown's case is highly specific and virtually impossible to reproduce. But the fact is that it has been proven that it is possible to beat the virus.

In time, last week, two new patients were also declared free from the threat of the AIDS virus. This occurred after both underwent bone marrow transplants in order to treat a blood cancer. As soon as the level of virus presence in their blood became undetectable, the medication with the retrovirals was suspended - and even after that the return of the threat was not found.

Combat Strategies

Since some results have been satisfactory, scientists have been able to form some action plans for the most effective fight against AIDS. The first and most effective treatment of all is to catch the disease in its early stages, especially when the virus has already been detected but has not had a chance to act. This occurs in infants diagnosed with HIV as soon as they are born, for example.

Image source: Reproduction / Shutterstock There have been reported cases in which newborn infants underwent retroviral treatment 30 hours after birth. Two and a half years after the start of the process, the presence of the virus in these patients became undetectable, making them free to grow healthy. In addition, scientists are now using real supercomputers to help unlock the secrets of HIV.

Of course the main guideline is still prevention on the part of people, so that the contagion of the virus is controlled. Therefore, we can finally say that the predictions about the discovery of the cure of AIDS are the best possible.