Day of the fight against AIDS: three advances in science in favor of the disease

A few years ago, the diagnosis of HIV (HIV) was a death sentence, but thanks to science many people have resumed their daily routine.

More than 40 million people have died from causes related to the HIVespecially due to the more advanced phase of the infection that it causes, the acquired immunodeficiency syndromebetter called AIDS.

According to figures from the World Health Organization (WHO), last year this disease claimed 450 thousand lives and 1.5 million contracted the virus. In addition, 38.4 million people are living with HIV.

It is that thanks to early diagnosis, the patient can be medicated and there are several countries where they are close to eliminating it.

For this reason, this December 1st in thel Day of the fight against AIDS There will be talk of three advances that have allowed to give quality of life to patients.

Effective and affordable antiretrovirals

HIV attacks the immune system and weakens the defenses, so it must be faced with antiretroviral therapy, which must be for life.

Although the combination of drugs does not cure the infection, it can inhibit the replication of the virus in the body and with an undetectable viral load, the disease is not transmitted.

“When a person has an undetectable viral load, they cannot transmit HIV to anyone. It is a vital element, not only to combat the disease but also the stigma associated with it”Ayako Miyashita, from the California HIV/AIDS Policy Research Centers (United States), told the BBC.

This combination of several pills a day, now you take a pill that no longer generates so many complications. Although long-term therapies are still being sought.

prevention drugs

The specialist points out this as a success, it is about pre-exposure prophylaxis, better known as PrEP, which is taken daily and reduces the chances of contracting the virus by up to 90%.

The American pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences began selling them in 2012 and three years later, the WHO began to recommend it among high-risk groups such as the LGTBIQ+ community, sex workers, and more.

Thanks to this medication, the infection rate in recent years has stabilized. The PrEP vaccine is the first technology drug that seems to bode well for the future.

research for a vaccine

Despite four decades of research, there is no vaccine against HIV. “Finding a vaccine against HIV has proven to be a daunting scientific challenge.” commented then-NIAID director Anthony S. Fauci.

“With the success in developing safe and effective vaccines against covid-19, we have an exciting opportunity today to see if we can obtain similar results against HIV infection,” commented.

However, patients have been known to be cured or have been free of the virus for months thanks to novel or experimental treatments that cannot be easily applied to all patients.

“One of the things that we cannot forget is that there are people living with HIV now and until we achieve that, not only the vaccine but the cure, we still have a lot of work ahead of us,” says specialist Miyashita.