Scientists claim to have discovered a rare group of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo who tested positive for HIV antibodies, but with low to undetectable levels of virus load without the help of antiretroviral drugs, possibly paving the way for the development of vaccines. or possibly even a cure.
Abbott announced in a news release on Tuesday that the prevalence of this group, called HIV elite controllers, was 2.7% -4.3% in the DRC, compared to 0.1% -2% worldwide. Findings from the study, published in EBioMedicine, may help to discover the link between natural virus suppression and future treatments.
“The finding of a large group of HIV elite controllers in the DRC is important, as HIV is a lifelong, chronic condition that usually progresses over time,” said Tom Quinn, MD, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health, and head of the International HIV / AIDS Research Division of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, and one of the authors of the study. “There have been rare cases where the infection did not progress in individuals before this study, but this high frequency is unusual and suggests that something interesting is happening at a physiological level in the DRC that is not random.”
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Abbott has been involved in decades of HIV surveillance to monitor and identify mutations in the virus that help with diagnostic efforts and inclusion. The current work is being done in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the University of Protestant au Congo.
There is currently no cure for HIV, but with proper medication it can be controlled. Medications are recommended for all patients diagnosed with HIV, as delaying treatment can harm the immune system and increase the risk of AIDS, according to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC).
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“Global surveillance is keeping us ahead of emerging infectious diseases – and in this case, we have realized that we have found something that could be another step in unlocking a cure for HIV,” said Michael Berg, Ph.D. research fellow in infectious diseases, said. disease research at Abbott, and lead author of the study. “The global research community has more work to do – but leveraging what we learn from this study and sharing it with other researchers brings us closer to new treatments that could potentially eliminate HIV.”