The need for early anti-retroviral treatment

Latest studies are showing that with the current HIV treatment mix known as Highly Active Antiretroviral Treatment (HAART), HIV levels in blood remain very low ( undetected with current technology) but cannot go lower even though the virus no longer replicates in CD4 because, it seems, the virus in the bloodstream is trickling from non-CD4 sanctuary [ no viral growth] in body tissues where the virus had been sequestrated prior to institution of treatment.

It is also observed that with this highly effective treatment, when started early enough and after say five years, a patient can be put off treatment for a year and will not experience viral rebound in blood. There is possibility to extend this treatment holiday further.

Simply put, when we get Highly Active Anti-retroviral Treatment early we may succeed to reduce the amount of virus in our blood to a level that can be contained or checked by our body's defence system. We will still have low levels of the virus in us but the virus is harmless because our immune system is there and will prevent disease progression.

Possibly, the residual virus could now act as vaccine, preventing us from contracting another person's virus. For example, when we get live chicken pox vaccine or contract chickenpox in childhood, we continue to harbor the chicken pox virus in us and it will prevent us from contracting chickenpox in adulthood. Similarly, it is hoped that reduced HIV levels, over time, will play the role of a live vaccine. This is only possible if we start anti-retroviral treatment early enough when we still have adequate healthy CD4 cells.

Shingles is a common opportunistic infection in HIV infected individuals. Normally, we will not have chicken pox if we had been vaccinated against chicken pox in childhood as this will have given us protection against chicken pox. However, people lose control of this vaccine and the live virus is reactivated over nerves, where it had lied dormant over time, causing shingles. Equally, some people lose this protection because their immune system has gone low due to HIV/AIDS.

Although shingles can result from lowered immunity from HIV, HIV is not the only suspect in this disease. Severe disease, stress, malnutrition, some drugs used to treat cancer can lower immunity and put a person at risk of shingles.

Dr. Oliver Verbe Birnso

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Natural Way to Lose Weight and Keep It Off

Most people express the frustration of straining to lose weight only to gain it back in a twinkle of an eye. This is because most weight loss programs are strenuous and not natural. Going to the gym is not always much fun and although you may enjoy playing tennis everyday this may not always be a practical way to lose weight, given that you may have to work on a daily basis to earn a living. If your job involves standing and talking then you may not only have the benefit of earning an income but also an opportunity to lose weight, for close to eight hours. You are more than twice able to spend calories standing than sitting. You are even luckier if your job involves body movement, since physical exercise is the best way to lose weight. If you are overweight, it is advisable to begin any exercise program slowly and build up with time. Although endurance exercise like jogging, may help you lose weight fastest, you will only keep it off if you refrain from lavishly rewarding yourself ...
Read more

How Much of Stress Do We Need?

The G1 phase of the cell cycle determines if a cell is to differentiate or not. During this phase, the cell develops protuberances(cilia) which sense the environment, effect movement and  in turn stimulate autophagy(nerve and muscle cells are much elongated from these protuberances). Levels of Nrf2, which lower levels of free radicals, fall in this pro-differentiation state. The longer the G1 the more likely the switch to differentiation from cell cycling. When there is transient fall in energy resources or growth factors, there will be less proliferation and more pro-differentiation, and when those resources later become available, more pronounced differentiation will take place. Transient spike in psychological, physical or nutritional stress will cause the engagement of the 5-phosphate pentose pathway that yields the anti-oxidant NADPH, and as well produces intermediates for protein synthesis. This promotes cellular prolif...
Read more

Fitness and Holistic Health

The body has a way of matching activity and immunity to metabolism. This is brought about through the circadian rythm. Driven by cortisol and entrained by sunlight and physical routine, this is a natural rhythm that is entrenched to all biological systems. It is governed by the major biological clock proteins  as well as organ-specific clock proteins and their negative feed-back inhibitions, which organ-specific clock proteins are different for different organs, and hence we have different times at which different organs' metabolic activities and functions peak. The clock proteins affect metabolism at the level of transcription in the nucleus. The body has to manage the limited energy resources carefully so that each organ's and system's needs are adequately catered to. To do this, different tissues have optimal functional activities at different times. However, the circadian rhythm is usually reprogramed when life-threatening and stressful contingencies avail, such as c...
Read more