Rooting out hidden HIV
By Nathan Seppa
Drugs currently used to suppress HIV, the AIDS virus, work only on actively replicating viral particles in the blood. When viruses lie dormant in a cell, they can escape the drugs’ dragnet.
Researchers report in the Aug. 13 Lancet that a novel combination of drugs can significantly reduce the number of these cellular safe houses in patients.
The new, three-step strategy combines a standard “cocktail” of HIV drugs to knock down active virus circulating in a patient, another drug that blocks viral entry into uninfected cells, and finally a drug intended to root out dormant HIV.