Some HIV-infected patients, less than 1% of them, are able to resist it all their life, without treatment or long after treatment has been stopped.
Their organism naturally limits the number of viral particles that develop there, sometimes enough so that they are undetectable in the blood.
In any case, they keep a sufficient number of CD4, the immune cells which the virus attacks, to fight against the opportunistic infections which characterize the passage to the AIDS stage and therefore never fall ill.
Known since the 1980s, these so-called “elite controllers” patients are the subject of numerous studies: understanding what gives them this natural resistance to HIV could be the key to new treatments or a vaccine.
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Researchers are beginning to understand the exceptional resistance mechanisms of these patients, in particular their CD8+ immune T cells capable of eliminating virus-infected CD4s.
Others…
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