Heal without medicine?

Science and Technology Daily, Beijing, November 17 (intern reporter Zhang Jiaxin) Recently, the research team of immunologist Xu Yu from Harvard University and MIT's Lagon Institute of Medicine discovered a second case of HIV that healed itself without treatment ( HIV) infected persons
.
Among the more than 1.

In August last year, Loren Willenberg, known as the "San Francisco patient," became the world's first HIV-infected person who healed naturally
.
The patient's genome did not find a complete HIV virus sequence, which indicates that her immune system may have cleared the HIV virus pool.

After the human body is infected with HIV, the virus will copy its genome into the cell's DNA to form a virus reservoir, and then continue to produce viruses
.
In this state, the virus can effectively evade anti-HIV drugs and human immune responses

Among AIDS patients, there is a special group of people called "elite controllers" whose immune system can control the virus without using ART
.
In other words, although they still have a reservoir of HIV virus in their bodies, a kind of immune cells called "killer T cells" can suppress the virus, so there is no need for drug treatment

The researchers said that the two patients have a common specific killer T cell response
.
If they can understand the immune mechanism behind this response, they may be able to develop treatments that will encourage the immune systems of other patients to mimic these responses in the case of HIV infection and achieve a clearing cure