According to the most recent data from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2010 there was an estimated 47,500 new cases of HIV infection in the United States alone. When it comes to diseases such as HIV, early detection has proven to be valuable in getting patients the correct treatment, and protecting their wellbeing against life-threatening complications.
However, the flu-like symptoms associated with HIV tend to take a few weeks to occur after infection, and in some cases people are infected with the disease but never experience any symptoms. This makes you appear healthy, but all the while the HIV is attacking your body’s functions. Another problem is that the HIV virus mutates at a quick pace to avoid the response of antibodies, rendering vaccines against the sexual health disease generally ineffective.
Yet Barton F. Haynes, MD, director of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute, has led a study in which researchers examined a particular HIV patient whose immune system was successfully able to destroy the pathogen. He reported, ‘For the first time, we have mapped not only the evolutionary pathway of the antibody, but also the evolutionary pathway of the virus. [This could help define] the sequence of events involved that induce the broadly neutralizing antibodies.’
This patient who has spawned the genesis of this potential cure came from Africa, and his immune system was able to attack the virus’s weakest points even though it had already mutated itself. With his colleagues, Haynes found that the patient’s high-powered immune response was triggered by the outer envelope, the viral surface glycoprotein.
For HIV infection to be able to enter into the white blood cells of the immune system, also known as CD4+ cells, viral glycoprotein is essential. Haynes concluded by saying, ‘The next step is to use that information to make sequential viral envelopes and test them as experimental vaccines. This is a process of discovery and we’ve come a long way with regard to understanding what the problem has been.’