New advances give hope but AIDS treatment is still far away | News from El Salvador

The Executive Director of the United Nations Program on HIV / AIDS (UNAIDS), Michel Sidibé, expressed his delight at the progress published in the journal Nature on the treatment of the virus with stem cells. Although he stressed that the treatment is still far and "there is a lot of work to be done".

The news "gives us high hopes that, in the future, we will be able to defeat AIDS through science, a vaccine or a cure, while showing how far we are from that and that It is important to continue to focus on the prevention and treatment of HIV, "he said in a statement.

The Geneva-based organization was "extremely motivated" by the case presented by the magazine, in which an HIV carrier spent 18 months in remission of the virus without taking antiretrovirals after undergoing a stem cell transplant because he had lymphoma Hodgkin, although he stressed the difficulty of this type of treatment.

"Stem cell transplants are extremely complex, intensive and expensive procedures, with substantial side effects, and are not a viable way to treat a large number of people living with the HIV virus," said the agency. of the UN.

However, he stressed the importance of following these surveys.

The case, reported at a medical conference in Seattle, USA, is the second in which an HIV-infected patient does not reappear in his body after Timothy Ray Brown, who underwent a bone marrow transplant in 2007. treat leukemia.

UNAIDS pointed out that there is still no widespread curative treatment for HIV, a virus with which nearly 37 million people live and of which only 21.7 million have adequate access to HIV. treatments, according to 2017 figures.