AIDS discoverer Francoise Barre-Sinoussi sees hope for AIDS cure
21 Jul 2012
Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, the Nobel laureate who helped to discover HIV said there was hope for an AIDS cure following recent discoveries.
Barre-Sinoussi, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2008 was part of a team that discovered the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which caused AIDS. She said scientific research had made major strides since then.
She cited the case of a patient in Berlin who underwent a bone marrow transplant that appeared to have cured him, proving thus, that finding a way of eliminating the virus from the body was something that was realistic.
There appeared to be much room for optimism given, the small minority of patients -- less than 0.3 per cent -- who exhibited no symptoms of the virus without ever receiving treatment; and a small group in France who were treated with antiretroviral drugs and now lived without treatment or symptoms, Barre-Sinoussi said.
She said there was hope, but it was not possible to give a date as it was not known to people who were working to defeat the HIV virus.
She added that elimination of the pandemic was possible "in principle" by 2050, if barriers to drug access could be eliminated.
She added, the main barriers were not scientific but political, economic and social, and the problem was lack of access to testing and drugs in poor and rural areas, as also the stigma around the virus, which undermined early detection and treatment.
