When HIV predictions win. Three people have beaten HIV. Can everyone be cured? How HIV was discovered

Q. When will an HIV vaccine be invented? Is there another way to heal?

A. In the next four years, there will be no such acute problem as HIV infection. Humanity will learn to deal with it.

Q. Will they come up with a vaccine?

A. There will not be a vaccine, but a stage of treatment, which will be changed.

Q. Does this disease itself exist? Is she not fictional?

A. It is so ephemeral that it is not entirely correct to speak of it as a disease. This is the pattern of human development at the stage at which it is.

Q. How to understand the pattern?

A. Not development, but rather degeneration, destruction, moral principles have changed. Any disease has an underlying reason, a basis. A person who leads a moral life, adheres to the basic principles, a person who is conscious has a better chance of avoiding this disease. Not counting the cases when a person becomes infected in the hospital. It's about awareness. A conscious and morally stable person has a better chance of survival. Perhaps this is a moment of cleansing and natural selection. The very approach to treatment will be changed. There will be a vaccine, and the treatment itself will change in about 4 years.

Q. A lot of people die from this. Is there still an infection, a virus? I just read information from Levashov that there is no HIV as such.

Oh. He is.

Q. Is this virus artificially bred or is it nature?

A. Nature.

Q. It was said that the Americans invented this virus. It is a myth?

Q. Are there any ways now to contain the disease and fight it effectively?

Q. What are the ways?

A. Immunity is the most important protector in the body, which needs constant attention, it needs to be constantly fed. In this case, immunostimulation is needed, and not as a one-time, but as a permanent process. Each person's immunity is different, so there will be different immunostimulating drugs. Everything needs awareness. A person who is conscious will understand for what mistakes, wrong thoughts and actions, even if he was infected in the clinic, and not in the generally accepted and widespread way that we are all used to. If a person understands, realizes, understands, forgives. The psychological moment is very important. The disease always begins on the subtle bodies, and then on the physical body. First bring the changes in the subtle bodies. There must be a strong awareness in what you are doing. Lead a healthy lifestyle. Avoid the active sun, aggressive ultraviolet, which greatly dampens the immune system. Healthy food, fresh food, water, good rest. Sometimes miracles happen. Until something changes in the head, the attitude towards the world does not change, the worldview does not change, it is difficult to achieve a result. There should always be a comprehensive and holistic approach.

Q. Should immunity be raised in advance?

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When will we finally defeat HIV?

It is not yet clear. Not likely in the next 10 years. But there is progress.

The most famous of the impressive stories is that of the Berlin Patient, Timothy Ray Brown. This lucky man was infected with HIV and leukemia at the same time. He needed a bone marrow transplant. His attending physician Gero Hütter, about to start the routine procedure of finding a compatible donor, recalled a university lecture that some people have a mutation in the CCR 5 co-receptor (which, along with CD 4 , is used by the virus to enter the cell) and such people are much less susceptible to HIV. In the registry of potential bone marrow donors, there were 80 people whose cells were suitable for transplanting Timothy Brown (a fantastic result, by the way). Dr. Hütter started researching the gene CCR 5 for all these people, and on the 62nd attempt, his hopes were justified. Timothy Brown's new lymphocytes have a pleasant additional property: they are practically impossible to penetrate the human immunodeficiency virus. In 2009, 20 months after the operation, Dr. Gero Hütter reported that, despite the absence of antiretroviral therapy, HIV still could not be detected either in the blood, or in the bone marrow, or in the intestinal mucosa. In 2011, the doctor confirmed that there were still no signs of virus replication. In 2013, the unfortunate Timothy Brown was meticulously examined in six laboratories and literally from all sides - biopsies, punctures, colonoscopies, a bunch of blood tests, all conceivable and unimaginable ways to search for a virus in all biological materials. Under such conditions, two laboratories were able to detect traces of virus RNA in blood plasma, and one found its DNA in the rectum - however, given the lack of such data in other laboratories, a false positive result cannot be completely ruled out. In any case, the virus still cannot be detected either in blood cells, or in lymph nodes, or in cerebrospinal fluid, or in the mucous membrane of the small intestine (where there are always a lot of lymphocytes hanging out, so the place to look is quite logical). And in 2015, Timothy Brown himself published an article about his experience: how he fell ill, how he accidentally chose the nearest hospital to his house, where he met with Gero Hütter, how the treatment went, why he decided not to hide his real name and communicate with the press. “I don't want to be the only person in the world cured of HIV,” Timothy writes. “I want other HIV positive patients to join my club!” Today he has moved from Germany back to his homeland in the US, where he established a foundation in his own name to fund research into vaccines and cures for HIV.

Of course, the method of treatment used for Timothy Brown is not suitable for ordinary patients: the process of bone marrow replacement is incomparably more dangerous than HIV infection. It's just that this example illustrates that some people have biological characteristics that make them less susceptible to developing the disease. Mutation in a gene CCR 5 is just one of these features, but in general, doctors distinguish a whole group of “non-progressors” - people who, after becoming infected with HIV, maintain a normal concentration of CD 4 + lymphocytes for years without antiretroviral therapy. Depending on the criteria of what is "years" and what is "normal concentration", the estimate of the number of these lucky people in different publications varies over a very wide range; the author of the most intelligible review I have found suggests that such people are 2-5% of all HIV-infected people. The reasons for this stability may be different. Some people are just lucky enough to be infected with a weakened, unfortunate mutant version of HIV. For some, cytotoxic CD 8 + lymphocytes work especially well - they quickly and ruthlessly find and destroy each new infected cell. Some produce a particularly large amount of the antiviral enzyme APOBEC 3 G, which prevents the virus's DNA from incorporating into the host's genome. Someone has a good combination MHC-genes, which makes it possible to attract especially close attention of the immune system to the new virus. Some have developed particularly successful antibodies. And so on and so forth - there is a lot of tricky and beautiful molecular biology. It is important that these mechanisms need to be studied, because they are the key to new drugs against HIV. So far, the only such new drug that has entered clinical practice is maraviroc, which binds to the CCR 5 co-receptor, preventing the virus from doing the same and, accordingly, from entering the cell.

But in general, there are a lot of promising approaches. New antiretroviral therapy regimens are being explored that focus on intensive treatment of the disease soon after infection - there is fragmentary evidence that, perhaps, in some cases, this allows you to have time to suppress the infection before it has captured the body. A search is underway for drugs that could stimulate (!) The synthesis of new viral particles: when the DNA of the virus is integrated into the genome and is inactive at the same time, this reservoir of infection is almost impossible to detect, but the immune system fights against cells that intensively produce the virus. The first trials of gene therapy have already been carried out - several people were injected with their own CD 4 + lymphocytes with an altered CCR 5 co-receptor (the principle is the same as in the Berlin patient, only without a bone marrow transplant), and the results are quite encouraging; at least such cells survive normally in the bloodstream and are not susceptible to infection by HIV. Another possible approach is to look for good, successful variants of antibodies against the virus and then administer them to patients. And the most interesting story, although still far from clinical practice, is the use of a new gene editing method, CRISPR / Cas 9 (I will talk about it in the chapter on GMOs), in order to simply take and cut viral DNA from human genome. It has already been shown that this can indeed be done in cell culture. It remains only to figure out how to do the same with a real patient.

The latest buzzword about HIV is the prospect of a vaccine. To put it bluntly, the prospects are bleak. The universal principle of vaccination - "introduce a weakened pathogen or its fragments" - does not work well here. The causative agent cannot be entered at all, it is too dangerous. Perhaps the body will develop antibodies to its fragments (and even then not all vaccines can achieve such a result) - but these will be antibodies only to the specific type of virus that was used to create the vaccine. As soon as a person encounters some other strain, he is again vulnerable. A similar story with the flu, against which, therefore, a new vaccine has to be created every year. But HIV is even more diverse than the flu, and, fortunately, it still does not occur so often that an attempt to develop (and inject every person!) Vaccines against all existing strains turned out to be cost-effective.

We have to come up with smarter approaches. For example, three vaccines are currently being developed in Russia. The Moscow Institute of Immunology made "Vichrepol", which contains the most conservative, rarely changing HIV proteins (obtained by genetic engineering methods). The St. Petersburg Biomedical Center has a DNA-4 vaccine - four HIV genes in one plasmid. Proteins are built according to genes in human cells, antibodies are formed to proteins, and an immune response is obtained. The vaccine created at the Novosibirsk State Research Center of Virology and Immunology "Vector" is called "CombiHIVvac". It contains a complex and beautiful artificial TBI protein, which includes fragments of HIV antigens, spatially oriented in such a way that it is convenient for B-lymphocytes and T-lymphocytes to get acquainted with them. But none of these drugs have yet passed stage 2 or 3 clinical trials to evaluate efficacy. Namely, at this moment, all hopes are usually destroyed. Sometimes it turns out in general that a new vaccine, the developers of which threatened to save humanity, not only does not reduce, but increases the risk of infection.

Testing the effectiveness of an HIV vaccine is a separate issue. You need to recruit a very large group of healthy people, give half the vaccine, half the placebo, and then wait several years to see which of them will become infected with HIV and which will not. People, in general, are rather frivolous creatures, they do not like to use condoms, and in any sufficiently large group that is observed for a sufficiently long time, there will certainly be infected. It remains only to compare how many infected in the group that received the vaccine, and how many - in the group that received the placebo.

The most successful HIV vaccine to date reduces the chance of infection by a third. This is better than nothing, but, alas, still not enough to launch mass vaccination. It is based on the repeated administration of two drugs. One of them is a viral vector delivering three HIV genes into cells. The second is a genetically engineered viral glycoprotein gp120 (a mushroom cap, if you still remember my attempts to describe the life cycle of a virus using artistic images). 16 thousand people took part in the tests. Half of them received shots of the real drug, half - a placebo. During the three and a half years of observation, 56 people in the real vaccine group and 76 people in the placebo group became infected with HIV. There was no difference in the number of viral particles in the blood of those who did become infected between the real vaccine and placebo groups.

It should not at all be concluded from this that the development of an HIV vaccine is hopeless. Researchers are actively working, the mechanisms of the immune response are becoming more and more clear, many parallel directions are being developed, all of which contribute to the treasury of knowledge. It is possible that there will not be a breakthrough in the development of an HIV vaccine in the coming years, but the effectiveness of the drugs will become higher and sooner or later it will reach a level at which vaccination is already becoming meaningful. Just at the moment when I had already finished the chapter on HIV (on a rather pessimistic note) and described the impact of acupuncture on my working biography in the fourth chapter, science journalist Alexei Torgashev drew my attention (and the attention of the public) to three recent articles, , devoted to the discussion of the question of how to vaccinate people (more precisely, so far animals) so that they produce broad-spectrum antibodies that can neutralize a large number of different strains of the virus.

Here you need to remember again how antibodies are produced - I wrote about this in the chapter on vaccinations. First, the B-lymphocyte binds to the antigen randomly, simply because its receptor more or less matched. Then, after receiving a permissive signal from the T-lymphocyte, the B-lymphocyte begins to multiply and, at the same time, mutate in order to obtain different variants of antibodies, among which it will be possible to choose the most suitable ones. And in order to get not just any antibodies to HIV at all, but antibodies of a certain structure directed to a specific fragment of the virus, many, many specific mutations must occur, and all in a certain, given direction. That is, you must first introduce the first antigen in order to, in principle, provoke a series of mutations in B-lymphocytes that recognize it. Then introduce a second antigen so that among this new population of B-lymphocytes there is someone who binds specifically to it - and also begins to mutate in order to bind even better. Then introduce another antigen to select suitable B-lymphocytes for selection among these third-generation mutants. And so on until such antibodies appear that can effectively protect the patient from HIV.

With conventional vaccination, antibodies in different people are different. Some catch the virus, conditionally, by the heel, others by the tails of the coat, and others by the ring finger. And here it is necessary that the antibodies in all patients are formed in such a way as to catch the virus specifically by the third button of the shirt. Moreover, if you immediately enter only the buttons from the shirt, then the immune system will most likely ignore them, they are not very similar to a big dangerous criminal. We must first introduce a shirt, and then encourage those who have contacted it with the buttons, and then those who are with the third button. It sounds stupid, but it creates the illusion of understanding (well, at least for me). It is becoming clear that terribly complex and beautiful approaches are being used in the fight against HIV, so, most likely, we will wait for the final victory of humanity over the virus. In the meantime, we must not be afraid of HIV-infected people, not think that they will immediately die or be unable to work, but be friends with them calmly. When friendship comes to sex, use condoms. As, in fact, with any new partner.

Izvestia held a round table on the prospects for combating HIV infection. How many years will it take for an effective drug to appear? Can it be developed in Russia? Will scientists around the world be able to join forces to fight the virus? Head of the Department of Infectious Diseases of the Sechenov University Elena Volchkova, Head of the Laboratory of Artificial Antibody genesis of the Federal Scientific and Practical Center for Physical and Chemical Medicine of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency of the Russian Federation Galina Pozmogova, Researchers of the Laboratory of Immunology and Virology of the National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute" Sergey Krynsky and Daniil Ogurtsov and Senior Researcher Institute for African Studies RAS Ruslan Dmitriev.

"News": The numbers associated with the level of HIV infection are growing, if not at a frantic pace, but steadily, every year. Where can we be in 5-10 years in terms of treating this disease?

Elena Volchkova

Elena Volchkova: I think that in 5-10 years the problem with HIV infection will be solved radically. An example of viral hepatitis C is indicative here. They learned to treat it completely.

However, one must understand that it is impossible to eliminate the infection until it disappears completely. We have the only example where this succeeded - smallpox.

There are three factors that can lead to the elimination of the virus: strict control of the situation, early access to therapy and prevention. But it is hardly possible to completely defeat retroviruses (and HIV belongs to this category) and solve all problems with infectious diseases. The ecological niche of the vanquished will be immediately occupied. I don't know why, but it's inevitable.

Galina Pozmogova: The successes of recent years, especially in the development and use of chemotherapeutic drugs, have already turned HIV infection from a death sentence into a way of life. Yes, today this way of life is associated with physical, moral, sometimes material problems. It is necessary to use an integrated approach: the efforts of society, the efforts of the patient himself in the first place.

How can a patient who does not seek treatment be cured? I would like to hope that the creation of a new generation of chemotherapeutic drugs will play a significant role in solving this problem. They should be effective, less traumatic when used, and have fewer side effects. People will live, despite the fact that they will be carriers of the virus. It will just be a lifestyle option of how people exist with diabetes. I completely agree that it will be impossible to destroy the virus as a fact.

Daniel Ogurtsov: Therapies already exist and are available to control the impact of HIV infection on longevity and quality of life. In recent years, the knowledge base on the biological properties of HIV and its interaction with the body has been intensively growing. Based on this, the patterns of selection of optimal antiviral drugs depending on the clinical situation are specified, methods of targeted drug delivery are being improved. In my opinion, further development of methods of treatment and prevention based on these data can have a significant socio-economic effect in the coming years.

Prospects for creating a Russian anti-HIV drug

Izvestia: Let's imagine an optimistic scenario, when in 5-10 years we will see the victory of science over HIV infection. Are there high chances that this vaccine or method will be invented in Russia?

Elena Volchkova: Hard to say. So far, there has been no significant progress in the development of a vaccine. The effectiveness of such drugs achievable today is 50%, and for infectious diseases this is nothing.

Galina Pozmogova

Sergei Krynsky: Agree with previous comment. Unfortunately, not all HIV vaccination methods show effectiveness even in the early stages of clinical trials. Antibodies that are naturally formed in infected people usually do not have a protective effect.

Creating a vaccine against HIV is a rather difficult task. It is not yet clear who will be the first to achieve success in this area.

Elena Volchkova: The classic vaccine is made like this: there is a surface antigen, a protein, it is injected into the body. Moreover, there is no virus genome - only a surface protein. Antibodies are produced against it. When the virus enters the body, they are met by antibodies that prevent the virus from multiplying.

But HIV is very changeable. Therefore, a stable structure cannot be found. The classic version does not fit here. You are absolutely right: we need a big genetic breakthrough, which, unfortunately, does not exist yet.

Galina Pozmogova: The path from the development of a biologically active substance to the creation of dosage forms, and even more so to use in medical practice, is extremely long, requires huge investments and an institutional organization in which it would be clear how a new drug will go through these stages. Maybe I am a pessimist, but it seems to me that these conditions have not been created in our country. The state, which used to deal with this, withdrew itself from these issues. We do not have an organization that could compete with large pharmaceutical companies with vast experience and significant resources. As a result, we have to buy extremely expensive drugs, and the profit from them increases the advantage of these companies.

From my point of view, this is sad, because this is a field where we still remain full-fledged players. We can offer a strategy for finding and creating new drugs.

Ruslan Dmitriev

Ruslan Dmitriev: As for drugs, we recently had a very interesting seminar on abortion. In Russia, we do not produce drugs that can prevent pregnancy. We have a rubber product No. 2 - and that's it.

Maybe things are better with HIV drugs, but in the case of drugs to prevent pregnancy, no one is investing in this.

AIDS cure instead of going to Mars

Izvestia: If humanity unites not for the sake of flying to Mars, but for the sake of defeating AIDS, can a cure be found in 3-5 years?

Elena Volchkova: In the fight against HIV, each country develops in its own direction. Sharing this cake is very difficult. There may be parallel studies in different countries, as is often the case in science.

Galina Pozmogova: Russian patents are valid only on the territory of the Russian Federation. For the rest of the world, we are now simply gratuitous donors of specialists and ideas.

From my point of view, only the state is able to organize effective projects of this magnitude.

Elena Volchkova: The whole pharmaceutical structure is built differently in the world. There are firms that are simply looking for active molecules. They only do this. Then, when the molecule is found, a rich company buys it back. There are a lot of companies that supply excellent medicines. They did nothing - they just bought the patent from the developers. Nothing else.

Izvestia: The situation is the least favorable in African countries. The struggle is ongoing, HIV has been flourishing for decades.

Sergei Krynsky: There are a small number of people - the so-called elite controllers, who, even without treatment, do not detect the RNA of the virus in the blood. The reasons for such high resistance to infection are not fully understood, but there are very few such people. The immunological mechanisms of this phenomenon are being studied, and a connection with the content and function of immune cells (lymphocytes) in the mucous membranes of the digestive tract has been revealed. In HIV infection, pathological activation of the intestinal microflora occurs, which can cause inflammation and opportunistic infections. It is possible that people who have strong mucosal immunity may be better able to fight the virus. This is one of the hypotheses.

Elena Volchkova: There are individuals who are genetically immune to HIV. There is even a theory that supposedly whites invented this virus in order to kill Africans. Although for the first time this mutation was detected in the prostitutes of Tanzania. The whole of humanity will not die out, because there are people who are immune to HIV.

Ruslan Dmitriev: This is mainly the white population of the northern regions.

Elena Volchkova: There is such data for Scandinavia. They have already calculated - this is approximately 5% of the inhabitants.

Sergey Krynsky

Ruslan Dmitriev: We have Pomors in the Arkhangelsk region. Not all, of course. But they, like many peoples of the North, have an increased, compared to other nations, proportion of the population that is immune to this virus.

Elena Volchkova: Maybe this is not a mutation, something happened at the very beginning of the division into races. There is no enzyme that allows the virus to finally bind and enter the cell.

Daniel Ogurtsov: This week I saw a number of contemporary works. They talked about the impact of a number of opportunistic infections on the characteristics of the course of HIV infection. There are studies that show that between the human herpes virus (HHV) type 7 and HIV there is a competitive struggle for "target cells". This kind of relationship with HIV is also characteristic of HHV-6, however, in this case, the inverse relationship between the concentrations of viruses is not so pronounced.

Based on this, it is possible to study new therapeutic strategies based on viral proteins in the future. You can also consider such opportunistic infections (diseases caused by opportunistic viruses or cellular organisms. - Izvestia) as a factor in protecting the patient from infection.

Elena Volchkova: At the same time, the type 7 virus is quite dangerous for humans. Very unpleasant conditions are associated with it - depression, damage to the central nervous system. This once again suggests that the niche will never be empty.

Galina Pozmogova: Currently, an active search for promising antiviral drugs is underway. Interestingly, the approach that is being developed in our laboratory turned out to be an enhanced version of natural mechanisms, which supports hope for its success.

Daniel Ogurtsov: Modern therapeutic approaches have gone far. The ability to suppress the reproduction of the virus in the body by influencing its structural and functional elements exists. In the future, vaccination can prevent the virus from entering the human body and starting to multiply. However, one should not forget that once having entered the human body, HIV is permanently integrated into the human genome. In this case, the approach to therapy should be much more complex. We are still far from being able to eliminate (remove. - Izvestia) the viral genetic material from the host cell without destroying the cell itself. If technologies are available to do this, this approach to therapy will be the ultimate breakthrough: not just to suppress the infection, but to completely remove the virus from the patient's body.

Early detection of HIV infection

Galina Pozmogova: One AIDS Day (December 1 - Izvestia) is clearly not enough.

Izvestia: Would you suggest devoting a week or a year to this topic?

Ruslan Dmitriev: There is also May 18 (AIDS Remembrance Day). On this day, we remember the victims.

Daniel Ogurtsov

Galina Pozmogova: Of course, we need a permanent program and constant funding, and not just one or two days a year.

Elena Volchkova: At the end of last year, a state strategy was proposed, three main directions were developed. The strategy has been adopted, the money has been allocated. Let's see what the results will be in a year.

They want to make a survey of the population the main direction. In America, a large percentage of cases first come to the attention of doctors seven years after infection. This is a very long time - can you imagine how many people can be infected?

It is necessary to identify it in time so that people know that they are infected and apply at least for the drugs that are now available. Our situation is quite good, we already have the latest generation drugs with a minimum of side effects. Now they are moving towards having everything in one tablet. Then you will need to take not 5-10 tablets per day, but one. We are talking about the fact that there will be drugs of prolonged action - once a week.

Sergei Krynsky: I agree that in modern conditions the prevention and early detection of HIV infection plays a decisive role in many respects. Early initiation of therapy is important both to prevent the spread of infection (as long as a person is receiving therapy, they cannot actually be a source of infection), and for the optimal effect of therapy. It is necessary to suppress the reproduction of the virus as much as possible, when it has not yet had time to cause severe damage to the immune system.

April 23, 1984, 25 years ago, was supposed to be crucial in the lives of millions of people on our planet. It was on this day that US Secretary of Health Margaret Heckler announced at a joint conference with Robert Galo that the AIDS virus had been discovered and that "a vaccine against the virus would be developed within two years."

This speech was a ray of hope for those people who had lost faith in salvation, they were not embarrassed by the fact that the results of clinical trials were to be received no earlier than two weeks later. The main thing is that the virus has been detected!

Are the lemurs to blame?

Where did he just come from on our heads? As scientists established much later, a retrovirus related to the AIDS virus first "wedged" into the genome of lemurs about 4.2 million years ago. So, at least, says University of Texas professor Cedric Feschott. He also established that during their multimillion-dollar history, lemurs experienced at least two large waves of defeat by this retrovirus. Most likely, hunters received a similar retrovirus from wounded animals. However, it had to undergo serious genetic changes in order to acquire a new, highly pathogenic form that causes AIDS in humans.

The origin of the pandemic has become a subject of particular interest to scientists. It is known that HIV has a whole tree of varieties, the genome of which can differ by 15-20%. Virus archeology, comparing different strains of the virus, has made it possible to determine the approximate time and place of the appearance of HIV in humans.

Scientists managed to get a biopsy of lymph nodes isolated from a woman in Kinshasa in 1960. It was compared with a plasma sample taken from a nearby village in 1959. This was the first analysis of genetic "fossils" that preceded the formation of HIV1. The analysis showed that different strains of the immunodeficiency virus existed in Africa long before the AIDS pandemic. Even the time of the appearance of their predecessor was determined - approximately between 1902 and 1921 of the last century. Covert transmission of the virus occurred until the 1940s. At the same time, three main varieties of HIV1 were born. The virus first spread among people in the Congo Basin and in Zaire. Since then, he has done a lot of trouble.

This terrible 1978...

And 1978 became the starting point only because from this period the disease began to have an avalanche-like character. The disease was first diagnosed in several homosexual men in the United States, Sweden, Tanzania and Haiti. Three years later, doctors finally noticed gay men's unusual predisposition to skin cancer. The disease was called so - cancer of homosexuals. In 1982, for the first time, it was suggested that the disease was somehow connected with the blood, at the same time, the abbreviation AIDS, or in our opinion AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), first appeared.

As soon as Gallo announced that the virus had been discovered, skeptics immediately appeared, who said that this was just a borrowing from Luc Montagnier from the Pasteur Institute in France, who a year earlier, although not so loudly, but announced that it seems he already understood everything. But the question of how HIV is transmitted from one person to another was, as they say, “open” at that time, neither Luke nor Robert could say exactly how everything really happens. And only a year later it became clear that the virus is "delivered" into a foreign body through a liquid medium: blood, semen, female secretions and mother's milk. That's when the world really shook! And in 1987, along with the first drugs for AIDS, there was hope that this disease could somehow be localized, narrowing the boundaries of its spread. But, as they say, if you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans. In the same year, the diagnosis of AIDS was first established in the USSR. But since “once it doesn’t count,” this did not really alert society, until in 1989, due to the negligence of medical staff in the hospitals of Elista, Volgograd and Nizhny Novgorod, more than 200 children were infected with HIV. As long as the disease does not affect a specific person (and thank God), he has the illusion that all this is nothing more than a bad dream, that all this trouble will certainly bypass him. Especially if he is not subject to such a “disease” as promiscuity. Forgetting at the same time that he can be “provided” with a disease anywhere and anytime.

How much has humanity lost from AIDS in the last quarter of a century since that memorable conference that announced that a vaccine would be found within two years? According to the most conservative estimates, since the beginning of the pandemic on Earth, 60 million people have been infected with it, while 25 million have already died. By the end of 2007, there were 33.2 million people living with HIV in the world. This year alone, 2.5 million people got the virus. It turns out that today about 1% of the world's inhabitants are living with HIV.

The disease is most prevalent in South Africa and other countries located in the southern part of the African continent. Currently, 5.5 million HIV-infected people live in South Africa, and up to 600 thousand of them are small children. The number of HIV-infected people in Europe and North America is about 1.9 million people. According to the United Nations Commission on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS), over the next 5 years, the number of cases worldwide will reach 90 million. The number of children whose parents have died of AIDS is also growing. In 2001, their number was 11.5 million, in 2003 - 15 million, of which 12 million live in Africa.

Now the AIDS epidemic threatens Asia. If the governments of Asian countries do not take urgent measures to combat AIDS, by 2020 this virus will kill up to 500 thousand people a year, UNAIDS recently presented this data to the public. Stopping the AIDS epidemic, which is already a reality in developing countries, will require $32-51 billion.

In Russia, according to official statistics, more than 200,000 HIV-positive people have been registered; in reality, this number reaches about 1 million.

Is the vaccine a myth?

With the announcement of the creation of another "AIDS vaccine" sometimes seem like an obsessive nightmare. Years go by, countries and names of developing organizations change, but the scheme is still the same: a vaccine against AIDS has been created (more precisely, from its causative agent - HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus), the drug has successfully passed preclinical studies (on cell culture) and the first stage of clinical trials (safety assessment on a limited number of healthy volunteers), the developers solemnly announce the start of the second phase of testing - testing the actual protective effect of the vaccine ...

Usually, nothing is reported about her further fate - as was the case with the vaccine developed by the Indian National Institute for AIDS Research, the Russian drug HIVrepol, and many other means of preventing the "plague of the twentieth century." The most conscientious developers, such as the American companies VaxGen and Merck & Co, honestly publish the results of clinical trials, from which it follows that a promising vaccine either does not affect the risk of HIV infection at all, or even slightly increases it. The world community sighs in disappointment - in order to accept in a few months with hope the message of a new miracle drug created by another institute or company in another country.

This simple story has been repeated so many times that even the most gullible and forgetful reader inevitably has a question: what is happening? Why is a frail, low-infectious and extremely unstable to an unfavorable environment monkey virus turned out to be a stumbling block for all immunologists and pharmacists in the world?

Usually, as an answer to it, one has to read that the matter is, they say, in the extraordinary variability of HIV. In fact, the scope and pace of this variability is quite common for RNA viruses: the common flu virus, for example, changes much faster and more strongly. However, vaccines against it have long been created. They, of course, do not provide 100% protection, but there has never been such a thing that vaccination does not affect the likelihood of infection at all. Not to mention the fact that she increased this probability.

In fact, everything is much simpler and more hopeless. The result of any vaccination is an immune response, which is provided both by antibodies floating in the blood, and directly by cells of the immune system. It is the latter (more precisely, some of them, primarily the so-called T-helpers) that are the target of HIV. At the moment when they cling to it, a cunning molecular mechanism is triggered and the contents of the viral capsule are inside the cell. A pre-formed immune response only makes the task of the virus easier.

All of the above is not news to experts. Nobel laureate David Baltimore said last year that an effective HIV vaccine may never be developed. To defeat this disease, new, non-standard ideas are needed - as deep as the ideas of Pasteur and Koch, Mechnikov and Erlich were in their time.

But government departments and private foundations - not to mention commercial companies - are ready to allocate funds not for the development of fundamental ideas, but for the creation of specific drugs in a time frame that can be financially planned. And while this is true, we are doomed to receive an endless series of "encouraging intermediate results." The essence of their "intermediateness" is intelligibly stated in the old joke about the technology of obtaining butter from shit: "The product still smells, but it is already smeared."

It has long been infamous around the world. She achieved this effect due to her systemic effect on the body, total suppression of immunity and the development of severe comorbidities. In addition, this disease is also known because at the moment there is no effective drug for this disease. Many people are interested in the question - when will HIV be defeated?

Thanks to this, many leading scientific institutions of the world are conducting research to create the most effective drug against the HIV virus. As a turning point in medicine, 2016 may go down in history when scientists defeat HIV. In many scientific journals, the first reports began to appear that scientists had defeated HIV. Is it true?

Research trends

How to beat HIV infection? The best minds of the planet have been struggling with this issue for many decades. A huge number of different approaches have been created that in the laboratory give a positive answer to the question: is it possible to defeat HIV, because in theory, if you look at it, it is enough to simply prevent the virus from entering the body and suppress its activity. In practice, it is rather difficult to answer such a question, since all laboratory studies are carried out under ideal conditions that cannot be created in the human body.

Due to the complexity of research and their inaccessibility to most people on the network, one can often meet such a request: how to defeat HIV infection with folk remedies? Unfortunately, the answer to this question is no, because this disease causes significant disruption of the body, and without the help of science, as well as drugs, it is extremely difficult to prevent its development.

How to defeat the HIV virus? Currently, the most promising are three areas of treatment, each of which may be true and most effective. If they prove effective, 2016 will be the year we beat HIV.

German developments

Quite often on the net you can find such news that the victory over HIV infection is already close, and this is feasible thanks to the work of scientists at the University of Hamburg. Is it true that German scientists managed to defeat HIV? It was on the basis of their research that the Brec1 drug was created, which makes it possible to achieve significant success in the treatment of AIDS and prevent the virus from multiplying in the body. German scientists managed to defeat the human immunodeficiency virus with this drug.

As shown by laboratory studies, this drug is active against a retrovirus. The study was conducted on rats. The effect of the virus on the rodent organism has been proven. After the introduction of the test preparation and the subsequent passage of a full-fledged examination, not a single viral particle was detected in infected animals, which undoubtedly indicates a complete cure.

In the near future, studies will be conducted on volunteers, and only then will it become known whose victory is HIV or science. Many scientists are confident that the drug will also work in humans, and if there is at least one positive result, then German scientists have defeated HIV.

Research by the American Institute of Immunology

According to the scientific developments of American scientists, the prospects for a complete victory over HIV lie in the effect on the metabolic processes of cells.

An extremely important nutrient necessary for the nutrition and existence of most cells is glucose. The virus uses it to build its own RNA components (since carbohydrate is the structural component of amino acids). By preventing it from entering a virus-affected cell, the virus cannot continue its replication and, accordingly, suppress the immune system.

The necessary studies were carried out and the following results were obtained - when blocking the PLD1 gene, it was possible to almost completely block the access of glucose to cells. At the same time, the activity of the virus decreased by almost 80%. However, it is currently unknown how to safely block glucose access to specific cells. It is precisely because of this difficulty that the necessary drug has not yet been received, which will make it possible to forget about immunodeficiency forever.

Thanks to this, the prospects for a complete victory over HIV in 2016 lie in the interruption of the cellular nutrition of virus-infected cells. If scientists succeed, then many patients suffering from AIDS and related diseases will be able to forget about this disease forever and “breathe deeply”.

If these human studies are successful, then in 2016 HIV will be defeated - many famous scientists believe so.

Scripps Institution Research

Victory over HIV in 2016 can also be achieved thanks to the efforts of scientists from the American Scripps Institute. According to the researchers, the main emphasis should be on stimulating the production of antibodies formed during immunization with antigens of the immunodeficiency virus. These antibodies are codenamed VRC1. According to the researchers, it is these antibodies that can suppress the activity of the retrovirus, but they are formed for a long time (in addition, they can only be synthesized if there is contact between the antigen and certain germ cells), and most often the body of an infected person goes into the stage of immunodeficiency.

An early victory over HIV is approaching, and these antibodies can become the main weapon against the virus. The main difficulty is to create a specific immunogen that can cause the formation of the necessary antibodies and allow them to enter into the necessary immune response.

The problem of research lies in the fact that it requires a lot of both monetary and intellectual means. If the global economy can support these studies, HIV will soon be won, and 2016 will be called the year of victory over the most dangerous infection of millennia.