How to beat HIV infection. When the HIV forecasts of clairvoyants will win. When will HIV be defeated? “As soon as possible” is when. Early detection of HIV infection

The researchers reported three cases of curing patients from HIV infection. Until March 4, 2019, only one such case was known, which was considered an exception or anomaly. The American who won the virus in 2007 is known in the medical literature as the Berlin Patient.

Nature magazine and The New York Times this week reported a second cured person, and on March 6, the New Scientist described a third case. All of them are united by a bone marrow transplant from a donor with a delta32 mutation in the CCR5 gene. Korrespondent.net tells whether all HIV + can be cured in this way.

Who defeated HIV

As of 2017, 37 million people worldwide are carriers of the human immunodeficiency virus. More than half of them are taking antiretroviral drugs and can lead a normal life.

Ukraine, like Russia and Belarus, occupies one of the first places in Europe in terms of HIV incidence - about 220 thousand infected. At the same time, half of HIV+ people in Ukraine do not know about their status, and about 40 percent of people with a confirmed diagnosis are in the advanced stages of the disease.

Timothy Brown was the first person to be cured of HIV. In Germany, 12 years ago, for the treatment of leukemia, he was transplanted with hematopoietic stem cells from a donor with a fairly rare genetic mutation of the CCR5 gene - delta 32, which significantly reduces the likelihood of contracting HIV.

This gene encodes one of the receptor proteins on the surface of leukocytes, to which HIV particles bind. A 32 nucleotide deletion in the CCR5 gene causes the virions to fail to bind to the receptor, and the carrier of this mutation becomes immune to infection.

Since then, scientists have been trying to replicate this achievement. But in each new case, the virus returned, and often this happened nine months after patients stopped taking antiretroviral drugs, and sometimes patients simply died.

The second cured was the London patient. The man, who asked to remain anonymous, contracted HIV in 2003 and was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2012.

Timothy Brown is the first person to recover from HIV / NYT

The only cure for this cancer can be a bone marrow transplant, which doctors at University College London, led by Professor Ravindra Gupta, performed in 2016 from an unrelated donor with the same rare mutation in the CCR5 gene.

Three years after the transplant and a year and a half after the patient stopped taking antiretroviral drugs, tests showed the absence of HIV in the man's body. According to Gupta, the patient is "functionally cured" and is "in remission."

The researchers warn that it is not entirely clear whether the presence of the corresponding genetic mutation in the donor is really the main factor.

The professor believes that the complication that appeared in both patients could also affect the disappearance of the virus from the body. We are talking about the "graft-versus-host" reaction, when the transplanted material begins to attack the patient's body.

On March 6, New Scientist reported on a third patient who may have been cured of HIV infection. Like the previous two patients, he received a bone marrow transplant from a donor with a mutation in the CCR5 gene.

The Düsseldorf patient was reported by researchers from the University of Utrecht who, under the direction of Annemarie Wensing, carried out the transplant. Three months ago, he stopped taking antiretroviral drugs, and so far no viable virions have been found in him.

The researchers say they are following several more HIV patients who received bone marrow transplants from a donor who carried a mutation in the CCR5 gene.

Scientists are monitoring the condition of 38 people with HIV infection who received bone marrow transplants, while six of them received transplants from donors without mutations. The London patient is number 36, the Dusseldorf patient is number 19.

Can HIV be defeated now?

Most people with the HIV-resistant mutation, dubbed delta 32, are northern Europeans. Specialists from IciStem have a database that contains information about approximately 22,000 such donors.

However, experts say, this does not mean that humanity has learned to treat HIV and now everyone can be cured. Most believe that such treatment is inappropriate for all HIV-infected people, despite the fact that not all of them have the opportunity to take antiviral drugs.

Transplantation of hematopoietic stem cells is done only in case of urgent need, since it is not only a complicated and expensive, but also a dangerous procedure, which can lead to death.

It is known that Brown, the first to be cured, was given strong immunosuppressive drugs, which are no longer used, and he suffered from serious complications for several months after the transplant. He was put into a state of artificial coma, and at some point he almost died.

In addition, modern drugs allow people with the virus to differ little from healthy people.

Therefore, usually the patients who had the opportunity to be cured were those who developed lymphoma or leukemia, and these procedures were required for treatment and other types of treatment could not be dispensed with. In this case, the donor must not only be histocompatible with the patient, but also have the necessary mutation.

Recall that CCR5 is a protein that the Chinese scientist He Jiankui, using the CRISPR gene editor, removed from the DNA of human embryos in order to make them resistant to HIV.

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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.

Vadim Pokrovsky spoke about HIV prevention and treatment methods

Vadim Pokrovsky

Moscow. November 26th. site - Head of the Federal Scientific and Methodological Center for the Control and Prevention of HIV Infection, Central Research Institute of Epidemiology of Rospotrebnadzor, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vadim Pokrovsky told Interfax correspondent Anna Sineva on the eve of World AIDS Day, celebrated on December 1, about methods of preventing and treating HIV, statistics on those infected, the funding of the center, advanced research into a cure for HIV.

For many years, HIV was a death sentence disease. And, despite the fact that in recent years medicine has stepped far forward, many continue to consider this a fatal disease. How would you characterize this disease now?

HIV / AIDS, as it was fatal, has remained if a person infected with HIV did not receive modern treatment on time, and even it is far from always effective. The number of deaths from HIV/AIDS in the world is decreasing, but nevertheless, about a million died from AIDS last year. And in Russia, the number of deaths from AIDS is still growing. According to official data from Rosstat alone, 18,577 Russians died of HIV/AIDS in 2016, and 20,045 last year.

Another sad aspect: while it is impossible to completely cure HIV, it slowly continues its "dirty work", therefore a person with HIV infection, even if he is on good treatment, ages quickly, becomes an old man 10 years earlier than a person without HIV .

- How many Russians now live with this diagnosis?

If we count from 1987, when the first case was detected, the number of registered HIV-infected Russians as of November 1 of this year was 1,306,109, of which 308,072 died, respectively, there were 998,037 living with HIV. But this number is growing by 200- 300 a day, and most likely the millionth Russian living with HIV has already been registered in one of the regions.

And by the end of 2018, we again expect 100,000 new cases.

In 2015, the United Nations named Russia as the epicenter of the global HIV epidemic. According to the organization, 80% of cases of infection in Eastern Europe occur in our country. How is the situation now, how much does our official statistics differ from these data?

The epicenter is the area from which the epidemic spreads, and in Russia the epidemic began 10 years later than in the United States. It would be more correct to say that now Russia is the area of ​​the fastest spread of HIV. Over the past three years, about 300,000 HIV-infected Russians have been identified, 100,000 cases per year. This is more than in the rest of Europe. In Germany, for example, only 1,700 new cases were counted last year.

- Can the epidemic get out of control?

When I hear that "the HIV epidemic is under control," I remember the fable: "I caught a bear, but he won't let me go." We control how the epidemic unfolds, but we cannot stop it yet. Populations in which HIV has long been spreading are already severely affected: in some regions, more than 50% of drug users and 20% of men who have sex with men are found to have HIV. The latter, in addition to homosexual men, also include those who enter into relations with persons of both sexes (bisexuals), and there are many such in Russia. Since HIV-infected drug addicts and bisexuals have sexual contacts with persons of the opposite sex (heterosexual), HIV is spread from them to the general population. According to preliminary data for the current year, as a result of heterosexual contacts, 54.8% of newly registered HIV-positive people became infected, with homosexual contacts - 2.2%, with drug use - 42.5%. The percentage of those infected through homosexual contact is low because men who have sex with men are few in the population, but HIV in this group is spreading rapidly.

So far, we have only managed to significantly reduce the likelihood of HIV transmission from an infected mother to a child, this is no longer with a probability of 30-50%, but only 1-3%, but we still need to work here to reach zero.

Does the state pay enough attention to HIV prevention? A few years ago, there was a social advertisement on this topic in the subway, but now there is practically no information anywhere. The state tried to fight HIV by introducing family values, not to mention the need to use condoms, disposable syringes, is this still true?

Although the Ministry of Health in its instructions uses the term "barrier protection" instead of the word "condoms", some positive development is taking place. Condoms are again advertised on TV, so we cannot say that condoms are still neglected in the information field. Nevertheless, the main way of "fighting AIDS", which the Ministry of Health has chosen, is not to prevent infection, but to identify Russians already infected with HIV and enter their data into registers in order to start treatment one day.

Here our approaches differ from the Ministry of Health. In my opinion, it is necessary first of all to prevent infection, and not just to identify and treat, especially since the Ministry of Health is not yet able to provide medicines to all Russians who have HIV infection.

Our infection control programs are extremely weak. The Ministry of Health does not even use the word "epidemic", so why should people use protection? They explain: "We don't want to sow panic among the population." You might think that, having heard about this, the people will run into the street shouting "Save yourself, who can!" They are probably afraid that they will be scolded for having "dissolved the epidemic."

In my opinion, it is extremely harmful that people do not know about the threat of the development of an epidemic in our country according to the African version, where HIV is spread mainly through heterosexual means. In South Africa, in 1994 only white homosexuals were found to have HIV, now 20% of the population is infected, and half of all deaths are AIDS-related. These figures are not so far away: now in Russia 1% of the adult population is diagnosed with HIV, and in some medium-sized cities - 4% of the population. The most affected group are Russians aged 30-40, that is, those who have already completed their studies and are working, and in the event of their death, the working population will be reduced.

- And according to unofficial estimates, how many HIV-infected people are there in Russia?

According to estimates, we have at least 1 million 300 thousand infected, that is, there are at least 300 thousand more, and maybe 500 thousand cases that have not yet been diagnosed.

- And what is the forecast?

The forecast is still unfavorable, since the Ministry of Health does not want to recognize the epidemic, and reports only on the successes achieved. But the progress is modest: last year, 340,000 out of 900,000 living with HIV received modern treatment, and this year - 412,000 out of almost 1 million diagnosed. And, despite this improvement, the number of deaths from HIV/AIDS is growing in our country.

- And the rest?

For the rest, the Ministry of Health cannot provide medicines yet, there is not enough money. But there are more questions for the State Duma. We need to increase the budget, only in this case we will be able to close the gap, buy medicines for everyone. In the meantime, the Ministry of Health is forced to buy medicines cheaper, but it is clear that not the best ones are sold cheaply.

There are also bureaucratic obstacles. In our country, first, the passport data for HIV-positive people is entered into the register, then they only allocate money for the purchase of medicines for their treatment, and the purchase is made once a year. It can take quite a long time for a person to receive the medicine. And the world mindset: to prevent the spread of HIV infection, you need to start treating all those infected with HIV immediately after detection. Most of the deaths are associated with late initiation of treatment.

At the end of 2016, a strategy was adopted to counter the spread of HIV infection in Russia until 2020. It provides that next year the number of infected people receiving antiviral therapy and registered with dispensaries should be 90%. How successful is the strategy?

The goal announced by international organizations is to diagnose HIV infection in 90% of all those infected and provide treatment to 90% of those diagnosed with HIV, that is, 81% of all HIV-infected people must be given medication. Those on treatment are less likely to spread HIV, so it is hoped that such mass treatment will also stop the spread of HIV.

We have replaced "all HIV-infected" with "registered in the dispensary", and this is only 70% of the number of diagnosed patients. If you still cheat, counting only those whose passport data have been entered into the registers, then maybe you can reach up to 90%.

But about 30% of those diagnosed with HIV do not go to AIDS centers at all. These are not only drug addicts, but also those who do not want their data to be entered into some registers: what if they end up on some site? And this is a problem for us - how to bring them, convince them to be treated? From them and from those who do not yet know about their infection, HIV infection is spreading.

Every year, 15-20% of those who started treatment abandon it - they get bored, worried about the side effects of therapy.

Thus, if the Ministry of Health announces that 90% are receiving treatment, make an amendment in your mind - this is only 40-50% of the total number of HIV-positive Russians. This is not enough to stop the epidemic.

- How different is the number of infected in different population groups?

The social groups are very different, as a percentage of the entire population, people with a secondary specialized education somewhat predominate. Probably because no prophylaxis was carried out in their colleges. Among those visiting AIDS centers, almost 70% belong to the economically active part of the population, which is even more than in Russia as a whole. This is explained by age: most of those infected with HIV are in the group of 25-40 years old, the most able-bodied. The highest percentage of those infected is among men aged 35-40 - more than 3% of them are registered as HIV-infected. Infected women of this age are 2%, but in the age group of 25-30 years, the percentage of infected women is higher than men - 1%. This is due to the growth of heterosexual transmission - women become infected from their older sexual partners. Many women think that it is impossible to get infected from a spouse. Meanwhile, it is believed that in the world 30% of women become infected from their husband.

- What should women do in order not to become infected in this case?

Ideally, it is best to get tested for HIV with the person you want to have children with, and before that, always use a condom. HIV infection is not an obstacle to marriage, but if you know that one of the spouses is infected, you can take steps to not get infected and give birth to an uninfected child.

- How much money is needed and how much is the state currently spending on HIV treatment?

The federal Ministry of Health spends 21 billion rubles on medicines, and about 10 billion more are spent by regional budgets. After all, HIV treatment is not only drugs, but also diagnostic kits for monitoring treatment, maintenance of regional AIDS Centers, remuneration of medical workers, etc.

To fully provide medicines, about 50 billion rubles are needed - this is the price of a modern submarine, and the fight against the epidemic is also a matter of national security. The same amount should be spent on building infrastructure, purchasing diagnostic equipment, hiring and training thousands of new doctors. Now AIDS centers are choking on the number of patients, doctors are overloaded.

HIV prevention activities also need to be well funded. In order to really take the epidemic under control, less than 100 billion rubles can no longer be met.

- How much does the drug supply cost for one patient?

The state now purchases drugs ranging from 10,000 to 300,000 rubles a year per person, depending on the complexity of treating a particular patient. On average - about 60 thousand rubles for the annual course.

- If a person decides not to wait for funds to be allocated for him and to buy medicines himself, will he spend the same amount?

It is necessary to focus on 100-150 thousand per year. You can, of course, buy drugs for 20 thousand, but they are quite ancient, 20-30 years old. And the more modern the drug, the less side effects, fewer pills should be taken at a time. But they are more expensive, and besides, our laws do not allow many new drugs to be purchased at public expense.

There are also drugs created in Russia, which are not inferior in quality to imported ones, but there are not many of them. Entrepreneurs prefer to follow a simpler path and reproduce generics, that is, copies of foreign drugs. Few people invest in the development of new drugs, because the economic effect will be only in a few years, and everyone wants to earn immediately and without much effort.

The best scientists in the world are fighting over a cure for HIV, but so far it has not been found. Are there any promising developments to date? And what do you think of the vaccine effort, how realistic is that?

For 30 years, it has not been possible to create a vaccine against HIV due to the fact that there are no cured ones, that is, acquired immunity, such as after measles, which is not ill twice, is not produced with HIV infection. Therefore, now the close attention of scientists is riveted to innate immunity. A small proportion of people in Northern Europe, about 1%, including in Russia, are immune to HIV infection. Scientists are working to learn how to transfer this immunity from one person to another and artificially create immunities.

- Is this immunity due to some change in the genes?

Yes. And one successful experiment using this feature was carried out several years ago. An American with leukemia, "blood cancer", had a bone marrow transplant in Berlin from a person immune to HIV, and as a result, not only leukemia, but also HIV infection was cured. This "Berlin patient" is believed to be the only person to have been cured of AIDS. But it is very difficult to select donors for bone marrow transplantation, so now a more promising idea is being developed - to take stem cells from the person himself, turn them into immune to the virus and introduce them back, both for treatment and prevention of infection. Our Central Research Institute of Epidemiology has already created experimental preparations of this type, but many more years will pass before their introduction into practice, since it is necessary to be sure that the method will not cause unpredictable consequences of interference in the cell genome.

- Do you think these developments will succeed and in what perspective?

I think in a few years such healing methods will appear. The question is rather how much they will cost and how quickly they can be made cheap and accessible to everyone.

- Are there countries comparable to Russia in terms of the number of infected, in percentage terms?

The number of people infected with HIV in China and India is about the same as in Russia, but in percentage terms it turns out 10 times less. There are exactly the same number of HIV-infected people in the USA as we have, but there are more people there.

To compare the situation, the features of the epidemic and approaches to combating it are more important. Europe has long stopped the epidemic among drug users, the problem for them is homosexuals and bisexuals. And we have an epidemic among drug users in full swing, so the involvement of the rest of the population in the epidemic is inevitable if the spread of HIV in this group is not stopped. And it's hard to work with them, turn to drug users on the radio - don't turn - there's no point. In Europe, special prevention methods were used, for example, "syringe exchange", in which drug addicts are taught not to inject themselves with one syringe, switch from intravenous drug injection to pills. But we do not approve of this - they say that if you distribute syringes, you thereby stimulate the use of drugs. They say: "Let's first cure them all of drug addiction." Will they die of AIDS before then? Therefore, the Europeans decided to first protect drug addicts from HIV infection, and along the way to lure them into treatment for drug addiction. And we only have disputes: drug addiction treatment is still ineffective and HIV prevention is not carried out.

Gays and bisexuals in Europe have proven difficult to work with because they do not want to use condoms. Especially since they know that AIDS is no longer so dangerous. In Europe, they are now being offered prophylactic antiretroviral therapy, this is called "pre-exposure prophylaxis". In France, even medicines are provided free of charge by the state.

- But in Russia?

While we are starting the first studies, we know that some advanced citizens are already trying to apply this method on their own.

- Is this method effective?

European experts are delighted! But we still cannot answer the question of whether it will be effective in our country. Moreover, the results of its use in drug addicts are not so brilliant. After all, it is very important that the drugs are taken constantly, regularly. Otherwise, it is possible that strains that are already resistant to these drugs will spread.

Is there a possibility that the HIV virus may mutate in the future to be airborne? Is this more of a myth or is there such a possibility?

The probability is about the same as the appearance of the wings of an elephant. But even if this happens, the elephant will not fly: it is heavy ...

- Is there a problem with counterfeit HIV drugs on the market?

I think that there are few falsified ones, but if you try to purchase them via the Internet, there is a possibility that they can sell drugs of lower quality or dummies. It is better to find pharmacies that sell officially.

- Is there a problem with psychics treating HIV?

Yes, but more of a problem with AIDS dissidents, those who believe "HIV doesn't exist" or "HIV doesn't cause AIDS." The fact that "AIDS exists" - they all admit it, otherwise psychics and healers would have nothing to treat. And citizens often believe them, even people with higher education. Patients stop taking antiretroviral drugs, pay money for fictitious drugs, but after a few months they become worse. This happens very often and ends tragically.

- What are the side effects of the drugs?

All drugs have side effects, and with HIV infection, you need to take several of them at once and for the rest of your life, respectively, the side effect may increase. Medicines can affect the liver, cardiovascular, nervous systems. When taking certain drugs, a tendency to suicide is fixed. Therefore, attending physicians carefully monitor the deviations associated with taking medications, and if suspicions arise, the drugs are replaced.

Some time ago there were fears that your center would lose funding. To what extent were these fears justified?

We are the only scientific institution in Russia that focuses on the problem of HIV/AIDS, epidemic surveillance, diagnosis, prevention and treatment. As a result of the administrative reform in 2004, we, together with the Central Research Institute of Epidemiology, to which we belong, ended up in the system of Rospotrebnadzor, which finances us. Previously, the Ministry of Health provided us with medicines. Now there is no. This is motivated by the fact that the institutions of Rospotrebnadzor should not be engaged in treatment, although we have all the permits and licenses. This concept appeared after I began to openly doubt the working methods of the Ministry of Health, although before that we had been treating patients for 30 years and developing new treatment methods for all institutions of the Ministry of Health.

As a result, we cannot help the Ministry of Health in implementing its plans for treatment coverage, and many of our patients had to move to other institutions, where they were not very welcome: there are enough patients of their own.

We can treat the sick, but not with the medicines that the Ministry of Health buys. And we are engaged in research of new methods of treatment, we are supported by Rospotrebnadzor. In January, we will start testing a combination of only domestic drugs to make sure that we are completely independent from imports. Prior to this, such studies have not been conducted, and for some reason the Ministry of Health buys very little of our medicines compared to imported ones. Participation in these trials is voluntary. Many HIV-positive people themselves want to do something to solve the problem, and we invite everyone.

Are you currently experiencing financial problems?

The Institute receives funding from Rospotrebnadzor, government orders for applied research. Each employee of our center receives the salary of a researcher. But there is no special funding. We collect data across the country and inform our government agencies about the real situation - how many have become infected with HIV, how many have died, what are the causes of infection, and we are developing diagnostic and treatment methods.

Unfortunately, in-depth scientific research on HIV infection is not yet specifically funded. If you want to do this kind of research, you have to apply for a research competition and compete with a thousand other projects. In my opinion, it is necessary to allocate special funding for scientific research in the field of AIDS, and already among these studies to hold a competition. It is well known that research in the field of HIV/AIDS, although often unsuccessful, has made significant advances in the whole of biological science. For example, developments in the development of drugs for HIV have been used to create drugs that completely cure the hepatitis C virus.

- Can you tell us about the human papillomavirus, is this disease dangerous and the vaccine against it?

There are many varieties of this virus. The most common cause papillomas on the skin, transmitted through household contact. But there are also varieties that are sexually transmitted and can cause cancer, especially cancer of the cervix and glans penis. These tumors are especially common in HIV/AIDS patients due to weakened immune systems. However, such cancer has "predecessors", warts and dysplasia, the diagnosis and treatment of which are quite effective. So far, there are no drugs that completely cure the papillomavirus, but they are being developed, and I think that we will soon get such drugs.

To reduce the spread of dangerous varieties of this virus, a special vaccine can be used. The issue of vaccinating children is being discussed, since it is advisable to vaccinate before the onset of sexual activity. Side effects of vaccines are extremely exaggerated, dangerous drugs are simply not allowed to be used.

Thirty years ago, on June 5, 1981, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced the diagnosis of a very strange form of pneumonia among homosexuals, accompanied in some cases by Káposi's sarcoma, characteristic of people with a weakened immune system. A year later, this disease was called AIDS.

Or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, and the virus that causes it is the immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The pathogenic virus has since spread among people as quickly as the fear of contracting it.

After 30 years, we can sum up the sad results of his "activities". Thirty million people worldwide have died and about 33 million are carriers or sick today. “At first we were in denial, thought that everything would work out on its own, then we panicked and began to doubt whether we could cope with the situation. And in recent years we have slipped into narcissism,” sums up 30 years of the “life” of humanity with AIDS, James Curran (James Curran, is one of those who diagnosed the first cases at the CDC.

In 1983, a group of French researchers determined that the HIV virus is transmitted only through blood, genital secretions, breast milk, it affects the immune system and is accompanied by tuberculosis or pneumonia. Up until 1996, the disease was fatal. The real turning point in treatment came in 1996 with the advent of the highly active antiviral therapy AZT. At present, at least in developed countries, an HIV-infected person can lead a normal life, and taboos and prejudices are beginning to break down, though not in Russia. Mothers with the virus have the opportunity to have healthy children. And treatment, if followed, guarantees 96% that the virus will not be transmitted sexually.

In addition, humanity began to meaningfully protect itself, disposable syringes and other disposable instruments were invented, and doctors rethought the security system, especially when transfusing blood. In addition, the fight against the HIV virus gave a big impetus to the development of virology. Enormous strides have been made in the development of new treatments for viral viruses B and C, and other types of a have been identified.

However, despite the fact that it was possible to transfer the disease from fatal to chronic, the prognosis of specialists is disappointing. AIDS has become less of a killer, but tends to spread. According to the UN, about 7,000 people in the world become infected with HIV every day, and only one in three (and according to some data, one in five) has access to medicines. The relative statistics are even worse - for every two people undergoing therapy,

five are infected. In addition, according to the UN, about half of those who are seropositive do not know about it. In some countries, the situation is generally catastrophic, in sub-Saharan Africa, the number of seropositive people is from 12 to 25 of the population, and these are mostly women.

At first, they thought that only homosexuals and drug addicts were infected with the virus, but today, not so much they (who are always on the alert), but married couples who do not protect themselves because they trust each other, are at risk. From a social point of view, HIV infection and AIDS are underestimated in the world, people have got used to the disease, consider it a rare disease and prefer to ignore it. Like 30 years ago, this is a shameful disease that is not customary to talk about.

From the point of view of science, two important tasks remain to be solved. First, to create a vaccine, and, secondly, an effective treatment. Estimates of prospects are very contradictory - from zero to optimistic. In the press now and then there are reports of the creation of a vaccine, it is reported that it is being tested, and soon the speculation subsides. The fact is that traditional models of vaccine and treatment do not work because the virus integrates with the genetic material in the cells of an infected person. Genetic intervention is needed to silence the virus. This is evidenced by a recent case of bone marrow transplantation from a person with a modified CCR5-Δ32 gene, resistant to AIDS, to a person with AIDS and sick with om. The leukemia did not go away, but the patient got rid of AIDS. It is known that about 1% of the white race has a mutation in the CCR5-Δ32 gene, which makes it almost impossible for them to be infected with the HIV virus. This mutation leads to the fact that human cells (including the immune system) cease to carry on their surface the CCR5 receptor protein, which is used by the HIV virus for infection. It remains to create a genetic engineering technique for artificially "switching off" the synthesis of this protein. So far there is no result.

Many doctors only hope for more effective traditional therapy drugs that could be taken not several times a week, but at least four times a month. And this, in their opinion, would be a breakthrough. The most pessimistic forecasts say that humanity will never find an effective cure for AIDS, because it has lost its immunity forever. These scientists prioritize the development of prevention and access to treatment. If progress is not made in the field of prevention, then in 2030 there will be 60 million infected in the world, according to Willy Rosenbaum of the same 1983 French group. He believes that the epidemic is not under control and the main task is to achieve universal testing and access to medicines.

In Russia, the number of HIV-infected people is about 600 thousand people, but in reality it is at least twice as much. According to the Ministry of Health and Social Development, in 2010 compared to 2009 their number increased by 42%. In some regions, their number has reached 1% of the population. The number of HIV infections among pregnant women and children continues to rise sharply. The greatest distribution is observed in regions with a high level of income of the population - Samara, Irkutsk, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Kemerovo, Leningrad, Moscow regions.

The average age of deceased HIV-infected Russians is 32.3 years. At the same time, the number of deaths associated with HIV infection is continuously increasing: in 2007, 11,159 patients with HIV died in the Russian Federation, in 2008 - 12,759, in 2009 - 13,990. Among the successful actions of the ministry, we must recognize the presence of a developed and accessible testing base and price fixing for essential medicines, which, however, are not the latest and therefore very toxic.

Patients with AIDS have so far only one hope - antiretroviral therapy, which is based on drugs that prevent the reproduction of HIV. The genome of this virus is written in RNA, therefore, after entering the cell, it makes a copy of the DNA on the template of its own RNA using the enzyme reverse transcriptase (reverse transcriptase). Then, with this DNA, the cell's own proteins begin to churn out viral RNA. If, say, the work of the reverse transcriptase of the virus is suppressed, then it will not be able to multiply.

However, even cocktails of antiretroviral drugs only help to transfer the disease from the acute phase to the chronic one. Such therapy can do nothing with a virus that floats in the blood or is in a dormant state in a cell. Therefore, researchers are looking for a way to get rid of the virus itself, and not just suppress its ability to reproduce. (By the way, conventional anti-HIV therapy theoretically allows you to get rid of the virus, but only under special conditions, and such cases, alas, are rare.)

But when it comes to completely expelling HIV, everyone agrees that there is no better tool than antibodies. On the one hand, everything is simple here, it is enough to find immunoglobulins that would recognize the viral envelope protein, bind to it and signal to the killer immune cells that this complex needs to be destroyed. The problem, however, is that HIV has tremendous variability, and antibodies usually catch only a certain proportion of viral particles, because the same protein in them is endowed with a number of differences due to which antibodies do not see it.

But our immunity is still able to cope with such a variety of the virus, creating broad-spectrum antibodies. The fact that the immune system can produce immunoglobulins that recognize more than 90% of the types of HIV, scientists discovered in 2010, and this discovery, of course, gave everyone hope that AIDS was about to fall. But over time, it turned out that such antibodies rarely occur and after a huge period of time, moreover, exclusively in response to a real infection - that is, it will not work to provoke their synthesis with a vaccine from a killed pathogen.

Meanwhile, scientists continued to work with similar antibodies. And not so long ago it was possible to discover universal antibodies that appear much earlier and look simpler than those that were observed before, although their universality turned out to be lower. But is it necessary to force the immune system itself to produce such antibodies? Two research teams, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (both US), have shown that broad-spectrum immunoglobulins, simply injected into the bloodstream, effectively lower HIV levels.

The groups of Dan Baruch and Malcolm Martin experimented with monkeys by infecting Rhesus monkeys with a hybrid monkey-human HIV that bred in macaques but looked similar to the human virus. The weapon against it was broad-spectrum antibodies obtained from AIDS patients.

Baruch and his colleagues used a cocktail of three types of antibodies, and within a week the level of the virus dropped so much that it could not be detected. A similar result was obtained when only one type of immunoglobulin was used instead of a mixture of immunoglobulins. After the level of such antibodies in the blood began to decrease, the concentration of the virus rose again, but in some monkeys it still remained indistinguishably low even without additional doses of antibodies.

In the work of Martin and his colleagues, we are talking about the same thing, only here the researchers used other types of antibodies against HIV. And again, the concentration of the virus fell in macaques within seven days to an indistinguishable (again: indistinguishable!) level and remained so for 56 days, until the antibodies themselves began to disappear. Further, everything depended on how much virus the monkeys had initially: if it was small, then after the disappearance of antibodies, the virus remained under the control of the animals’ own immunity, but if there was a lot of it initially, then the level began to grow.

As the researchers emphasize, the virus disappeared both from the blood and from other tissues, and it did not develop any resistance to the injected antibodies. (There was, however, one exception: when only one antibody was injected in the second study, and the subject was a monkey with 3 years of cohabitation with the virus, it developed a resistant viral strain.)

In two cases, scientists did not treat the virus for too long with human antibodies, as they were afraid that the immune system of monkeys would begin to resent against foreign immune proteins, and this may have been the reason that in most cases the virus recovered. That is, it is not yet clear whether this effect can be made “long-lasting”. All this will become clear only after clinical trials; As for the results described above, one can understand the enthusiasm of the researchers - for the first time in a living organism, it was possible to reduce the level of viremia so much.