Science Friday Podcast Recap: Battling HIV, Using a Body's Own Immune Cells

In a recent podcast episode of the Science Friday podcast with host Ira Flatow, he and his guest who is the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease discussed three recent discoveries in the medicinal world of HIV treatments. The first discovery discussed was if babies of mothers with HIV are injected with an aggressive amount of anti HIV drugs right after birth, the HIV infection is then purged from the baby's blood. Though hospitals used to use a heavily reduced amount of anti HIV drugs on children of mothers afflicted with HIV before to avoid toxicity, this may soon change due to this discovery. The second discovery discussed was the removal of white blood cells of an HIV positive person followed by the genetic modification to make those white blood cells HIV resistant and then return of these modified cell to the patient that significantly helped these patients. There were twelve people tested in this study, and this test allowed the researchers to know that this method is safe and yields helpful results. The researchers discovered through this study that they can modify cells capable of hanging around in a person's body though these cells do not replace cells vulnerable to the infection. They saw that the virus bounced back, this method of HIV treatment still benefited the patients and needs further research. The third discovery discussed was an experiment involving the testing of antiviral drugs on monkeys with the monkey equivalent of HIV. This experiment was conducted to see if vaccinations 3 or 4 times a year could prevent HIV as much as daily pills do since many humans consider the daily pill too much of a hassle. The study showed that the vaccinations only 3 to 4 times a year rather than a daily regimen are equally effective. There is hope yet for those afflicted with this deadly infection.