AIDS Non Progressors: The Key to a Vaccine? By Samuel Peterson At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

No other disease creates so much fear and revulsion as the disease of AIDS. But the worst part about AIDS is that it’s an equal opportunity killer; no socio-economic strata or age group is open to discrimination to the effects and ravages of AIDS. Thousands of patients have died due to the disease and thousand more are already infected with the condition. With no sign of a vaccine for several years yet, most infected patients are steadily getting desperate about losing their lives to the insidious disease. But recently a few AIDS patients have created a sensation.

HIV non progressors are a tiny majority if patients who are infected but never develop AIDS. They do not even need to use the anti retro viral therapy that all HIV patients use to keep their viral load under control! This in itself is mind boggling as all HIV positive patients need to start on anti retro viral therapy to prevent moving into the AIDS syndrome. In order to understand this unique phenomenon, it becomes essential to understand the essential difference between HIV and AIDS.

HIV positive patients are harboring the HIV virus in their body in the CD4 lymphocytes cells in their body. They use human CD4 cells to manufacture new copies of themselves and kill the CD4 cells in the process. But all CD4 cells are responsible for protecting the human body from infection! The entire process takes on a vicious circle where the virus attacks the body and infects those same cells that are supposed to kill them off and protect the body. The HIV continues to replicate killing off all CD4 cells and when a certain threshold level of viral cells is reached (viral load) the body starts catching several varieties of different infections. HIV positive patients use anti retro viral therapy to prevent the HIV from replicating by killing CD4 cells. Although this is the main understanding of how the disease progresses; the entire process is refuted by the HIV non progressors!

The HIV non progressors never progress to the AIDS syndrome stage even if they are not on anti retroviral therapy. In fact several of the HIV non progressors patients have never taken any medication and never progress into AIDS remaining completely healthy for 10-12 years beyond the expected survival rate! Researchers are scrambling to find out exactly why this happens but no one has yet been able to identify the exact reason. The main cause of the non-progression of the disease and the HIV/CD4 balance has been attributed to a quirk in the genetic code of the infected individual. But the tragedy is that less that 2% of all the infected HIV patients are non-progressors with many of these being totally unaware of their unique condition.

Drug companies have come forward to ask these patients to contribute their blood, bone marrow or any other tissue samples that might be required so that they can find a cure for AIDS as soon as possible. There are strong hopes that these patients may have an AIDS vaccine hidden in their genes somewhere.

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