HIV Digest	HIV Digest Archive

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Commenting on tantalizing data suggesting that some patients may be able to suppress and "manage" HIV infection for months or years with the help of highly active therapy, Dave Gilden notes: "Viruses that are held in check by the immune system but never completely eliminated have the nasty habit of coming back when the immune system is weakened by age, malnutrition, acquired immune deficiency or any other stress. Chicken pox, for example, recurs later in life as shingles, whereas Epstein-Barr virus is associated with lymphoma. What, then, will an HIV breakthrough look like-- assuming that the strategies to provoke protective anti-HIV immunity succeed in putting the virus in remission? The answer is, no one knows. It might look like primary HIV infection or long-lasting HIV might ultimately trigger malignant changes in cells. Either way, drug therapy could be reinstituted and might work as well as it did the first time. Or maybe not, depending on the status of the body at the time. The future of remission is entirely speculative, but putting HIV infection in a resting state does not mean that it can be forgotten."

Editor's Note: from GMHC's Treatment Issues