Possible HIV/AIDS treatment breakthrough?

The first major breakthrough in finding the cure for HIV/AIDS doesn't get much publicity in the Americas, though.

A durable new drug that prevents HIV from entering human cells and causes almost no side effects has been developed by a team of researchers at Kumamoto University.

The new drug, code named AK602, was reported by the research team's leader, Hiroaki Mitsuya, at the International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific in Kobe on Tuesday.

The drug's main feature is that it shuts out the AIDS virus at the point when it tries to intrude into a human cell.

Current AIDS medicines can lose their effectiveness in a few days when the virus changes and develops a resistance to those drugs. But AK602 is different because it reacts to human cells instead of attacking the virus, Mitsuya said.

He said the drug sticks to a protein called CCR5 that acts as an entrance into human cells for the AIDS virus. When the new drug becomes attached to the protein, it can prevent HIV from entering, and thus stop the virus from spreading.

The researchers conducted clinical tests on 40 AIDS patients in the United States.

AK602 not only proved effective against viruses that had become resistant to other drugs, but it also caused almost no side effects, the team said.

Thanks to Optimal for giving me this article.

Source: asahi.com

The same article can be found here @ Science Daily

As good as that news is unfortunetly i dont think itll get off the ground for the simple reason that there is no mony in cures :(

Who knows, hopefully ill be proven wrong on this one though :)

Regards,

Lee

the corporations and government in the u.s. seem to think that money is all that matters a lot of the time. a good friend of mine died of a kind of leukemia recently that there is a cure for in europe - my son sent me the link. it's not uncommonly used, and the treatment is one year. here, no one ever mentioned such a thing existed, and when you talk to doctors or just folks you know, they feel such things are not real - apparently we've been led to believe that cures don't exist.

I'm always highly skeptical of these press release announcements of major breakthroughs, especially when it comes to HIV/AIDS.

There are countless instances in which scientists eager for funding, pharmaceuticals eager for PR, and researchers eager for attention throw out press releases with grand claims and big announcements, only to have their claims tempered if not undone by the realities of their trials, methods, and results as published in the scientific journals and exposed to review.

Personally, I feel it's irresponsible for these researchers to, time and time again, send out press releases prior to publishing their studies in the journals. Hell, so often they send out the press releases prior to even submitting their studies to journals. The media outlets pass these press releases on practically verbatim, choosing not to critically analyze the press release's claims or even bring it to peoples' attention when the claims are subsequently refuted.

As much as I, as well as anyone else, tries to remain hopeful and have faith in the scientific community, my readings on the integrity, reliability and honesty involved in the relationship between science and media makes me highly skeptical.

too many "cures" were found in the last several months, only to fail in tests later on. Which doesn't mean that it won't work. It just depends I guess

the Japanese claimed to have finally solved hairloss too, that was like in February or March. Some new hair product that was developed, and well ... nothing more was heard past the press release

cures are pretty much like medicine's , they sit on a shelf till they have been "approved!" for distribution! , as mentioned there's no money in cures!

sincerely ~ ..."the city has approved a "stop-sign" in light on numerous accidents resulting in deaths!"...( interpreted: the city hospital is "over-booked" so we need to slow down the supply! )

p.s ~ you'll notice that most cures come from outside the U.S because the focus is "people!" not "capitali$m!"