Researchers have identified a second HIV-positive person whose body might have naturally cleared the infection — sparking hope that studying such exceedingly rare events will help lead to a cure.
The researchers cautioned that they cannot prove the woman has fully eradicated the virus from her body, in what’s known as a “sterilizing” cure.
But in exhaustive tests of over 1.5 billion cells from her body, the scientists could not find any HIV genetic material that is capable of spurring infection.
[Researcher Dr. Xu] Yu and her colleagues have gained some insights, though, using recently developed gene-sequencing technology to analyze elite controllers’ blood cells. They’ve found that in those patients, HIV is often integrated into parts of the cell genome that are essentially “gene deserts.”
In other words, the viral genetic material is sequestered far away from the genes a blood cell uses to make proteins. That suggests those infected cells are less able to churn out copies of HIV.
The mystery remains, however, as to how elite controllers banish HIV to gene deserts.
