4 ms·

What happens if we manage to kill 91% of the HIV strains? Won't the remaining 9% of the strains continue to spread and mutate? Then we're back to square one.

someone_here 16y ago
Less people will be infected...
hazzen 16y ago
Likewise, 91% of the strains is not necessarily the same as 91% of the people currently living with HIV. Can anyone provide details on what, exactly, this finding does? Do we need to kill 100% of the HIV strains to have a cure? Is there one strain that is the "dangerous" one, and it isn't covered in the 91% number? Will the virus simply mutate new strains?
- BahUnfair 16y ago
  I'd assume it means 91% of strains of HIV. It means that the odds that someone has a vulnerable strain is greatly increased and thus you can heal more people. HIV has a few limits, firstly (I think) it only infects one type of cell (CD4 immune cells - white blood cells), secondly, it doesn't spread as easy as influenza, you need to exchange some bodily fluids with someone, preferably with an abundant supply of CD4 cells to infect. Since it generally requires sex to get HIV, if you knock out 91% of strains the other strains wont rush in to fill the vacuum. The resistant strains already present will almost certainly increases as a proportion of the HIV population, its just natural selection. Use of condoms can prevent people from getting the resistant strains. Interestingly, male circumcision is also an excellent way to reduce chances of HIV infection because there will be less CD4 cells in your penis.
sliverstorm 16y ago
There's rarely an antibody that kills every possible strain of a disease, illustrated by the fact that there is not an antibody that kills every disease. 91% of HIV strains means we are 91% of the way to complete eradication. Plus, one of the big problems thus far have been we had NO IDEA how to attack the HIV bodies. Perhaps developing an understanding of this antibody will allow us to gain new understanding, and perhaps in good 'ol engineering tradition we will be able to change this, that, recompile, and cover a few more %. I know it's not that easy, but if you've ever developed code or hardware, having pre-existing, working models makes everything miles and miles easier.
- albertcardona 16y ago
  91% of HIV strains means we are 91% of the way to complete eradication. That is inaccurate. Current antiviral agents remove most (as in over 90%) of the HIV viral particles from the blood of a patient. But then after weeks or months the viral load in blood is just as high. And any given patient has numerous strains within. Furthermore, most viral particles are not active: the virus saturates the immune system with defective particles (in a way it screens itself under noise). What's worse, HIV has long-term repositories like nervous system cells, from which particles are emitted at low rate. Killing your brain cells just to get rid of HIV defeats the purpose. What this novel antibody will do is to remove 91% of the strains, meaning the remaining 9% will flourish enormously . RNA viruses mutate very fast and broadly (always being one step before crash-error). What a good antibody can do is cut short the epidemics side of HIV: if a patient's HIV load is so low that it can't effectively and consistently pass on its infection to another person, the infection dies with the patient. This leads to a negative feedback loop that stops the epidemic. It's the same concept as vaccines: ensure that a sufficiently large proportion of the population is immune, so infections cannot spread when they inevitably appear in isolated individuals.
  - sliverstorm 16y ago
    So what you're saying is anyone who has HIV has been infected by every single HIV strain?
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - albertcardona 16y ago
      Rather, that each strain has so much variation as the term to be nearly meaningless other than for taxonomic purposes and tracking infection origins and spreading patterns.
seancron 16y ago
It can, however, make the population of people who have HIV much smaller and slow the spread of it down dramatically.
sliverstorm 16y ago
At the very least, it could buy a second chance for a lot of people, even if it's not all of them. I'm sure there's plenty of people out there who are not career druggies or sluts who had one stupid or unlucky night that is going to ruin the rest of their lives, and could use a second chance. EDIT: sorry, I worded this terribly. What I meant was there are many people who would not catch HIV again, and thus would benefit from a cure to only 91% of HIV. The people who will continue being reckless and catch it again will, of course, not benefit from an antibody protecting them from only 91% of HIV, and that was what I was talking about when I referenced druggies. I'd be more than happy to give hardcore druggies a cure. The whole point was not that some people deserve it and some don't, but that some will gain huge benefits even if it's only 91%, and that is why even though it's not 100% coverage it's still a plus. (of course, not everyone will, because some people will go and catch the other 9% right away, so for them it's not really a benefit, but SOME WILL BENEFIT) EDIT2: to those of you still downvoting, are you trying to say you think every single person on the planet with AIDS would not catch it again if they were cured, but still vulnerable to some strains? That seems kind of unlikely.
- BrandonM 16y ago
  You seem to be implying that "druggies" and "sluts" don't deserve a second chance edit: feel free to re-word it if you like, as long as you leave a note that you edited it.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- halo 16y ago
  >I'm sure there's plenty of people out there who are not career druggies or sluts That reminds me a lot of Good AIDS vs Bad AIDS from the British documentary satire Brass Eye (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFNs2mOkKzc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFNs2mOkKzc)
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
Natsu 16y ago
Yeah, that's why the usual solution is to cobble together a bunch of different 90% solutions until you have something pretty close to a 100% solution. Scientists are going through something similar with fighting wheat rust (which you've probably never heard of, but it'll be an important problem if it gets out of control). The problem with HIV is that every obvious way of attacking it seems to have some kind of drawback that's less than obvious. You can sit around and think up all kinds of hypothetical scenarios for attacking it and find that people have already tried that. And failed.
- lasonrisa 16y ago
  HN can be a very interesting place: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1496772 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1496772 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=158450 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=158450 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=661907 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=661907
  - Natsu 16y ago
    I guess should have known that the people around here would know what wheat rust is. But yeah, that stuff is pretty nasty, as far as its ability to kill wheat goes.

someone_here 16y ago

Less people will be infected...

hazzen 16y ago

Likewise, 91% of the strains is not necessarily the same as 91% of the people currently living with HIV. Can anyone provide details on what, exactly, this finding does? Do we need to kill 100% of the HIV strains to have a cure? Is there one strain that is the "dangerous" one, and it isn't covered in the 91% number? Will the virus simply mutate new strains?

BahUnfair 16y ago
I'd assume it means 91% of strains of HIV. It means that the odds that someone has a vulnerable strain is greatly increased and thus you can heal more people. HIV has a few limits, firstly (I think) it only infects one type of cell (CD4 immune cells - white blood cells), secondly, it doesn't spread as easy as influenza, you need to exchange some bodily fluids with someone, preferably with an abundant supply of CD4 cells to infect. Since it generally requires sex to get HIV, if you knock out 91% of strains the other strains wont rush in to fill the vacuum. The resistant strains already present will almost certainly increases as a proportion of the HIV population, its just natural selection. Use of condoms can prevent people from getting the resistant strains. Interestingly, male circumcision is also an excellent way to reduce chances of HIV infection because there will be less CD4 cells in your penis.

sliverstorm 16y ago

There's rarely an antibody that kills every possible strain of a disease, illustrated by the fact that there is not an antibody that kills every disease. 91% of HIV strains means we are 91% of the way to complete eradication. Plus, one of the big problems thus far have been we had NO IDEA how to attack the HIV bodies. Perhaps developing an understanding of this antibody will allow us to gain new understanding, and perhaps in good 'ol engineering tradition we will be able to change this, that, recompile, and cover a few more %. I know it's not that easy, but if you've ever developed code or hardware, having pre-existing, working models makes everything miles and miles easier.

albertcardona 16y ago
91% of HIV strains means we are 91% of the way to complete eradication. That is inaccurate. Current antiviral agents remove most (as in over 90%) of the HIV viral particles from the blood of a patient. But then after weeks or months the viral load in blood is just as high. And any given patient has numerous strains within. Furthermore, most viral particles are not active: the virus saturates the immune system with defective particles (in a way it screens itself under noise). What's worse, HIV has long-term repositories like nervous system cells, from which particles are emitted at low rate. Killing your brain cells just to get rid of HIV defeats the purpose. What this novel antibody will do is to remove 91% of the strains, meaning the remaining 9% will flourish enormously . RNA viruses mutate very fast and broadly (always being one step before crash-error). What a good antibody can do is cut short the epidemics side of HIV: if a patient's HIV load is so low that it can't effectively and consistently pass on its infection to another person, the infection dies with the patient. This leads to a negative feedback loop that stops the epidemic. It's the same concept as vaccines: ensure that a sufficiently large proportion of the population is immune, so infections cannot spread when they inevitably appear in isolated individuals.
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  So what you're saying is anyone who has HIV has been infected by every single HIV strain?
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - albertcardona 16y ago
    Rather, that each strain has so much variation as the term to be nearly meaningless other than for taxonomic purposes and tracking infection origins and spreading patterns.

seancron 16y ago

It can, however, make the population of people who have HIV much smaller and slow the spread of it down dramatically.

sliverstorm 16y ago

At the very least, it could buy a second chance for a lot of people, even if it's not all of them. I'm sure there's plenty of people out there who are not career druggies or sluts who had one stupid or unlucky night that is going to ruin the rest of their lives, and could use a second chance. EDIT: sorry, I worded this terribly. What I meant was there are many people who would not catch HIV again, and thus would benefit from a cure to only 91% of HIV. The people who will continue being reckless and catch it again will, of course, not benefit from an antibody protecting them from only 91% of HIV, and that was what I was talking about when I referenced druggies. I'd be more than happy to give hardcore druggies a cure. The whole point was not that some people deserve it and some don't, but that some will gain huge benefits even if it's only 91%, and that is why even though it's not 100% coverage it's still a plus. (of course, not everyone will, because some people will go and catch the other 9% right away, so for them it's not really a benefit, but SOME WILL BENEFIT) EDIT2: to those of you still downvoting, are you trying to say you think every single person on the planet with AIDS would not catch it again if they were cured, but still vulnerable to some strains? That seems kind of unlikely.

BrandonM 16y ago
You seem to be implying that "druggies" and "sluts" don't deserve a second chance edit: feel free to re-word it if you like, as long as you leave a note that you edited it.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
halo 16y ago
>I'm sure there's plenty of people out there who are not career druggies or sluts That reminds me a lot of Good AIDS vs Bad AIDS from the British documentary satire Brass Eye (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFNs2mOkKzc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFNs2mOkKzc)
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

Natsu 16y ago

Yeah, that's why the usual solution is to cobble together a bunch of different 90% solutions until you have something pretty close to a 100% solution. Scientists are going through something similar with fighting wheat rust (which you've probably never heard of, but it'll be an important problem if it gets out of control). The problem with HIV is that every obvious way of attacking it seems to have some kind of drawback that's less than obvious. You can sit around and think up all kinds of hypothetical scenarios for attacking it and find that people have already tried that. And failed.

lasonrisa 16y ago
HN can be a very interesting place: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1496772 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1496772 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=158450 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=158450 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=661907 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=661907
- Natsu 16y ago
  I guess should have known that the people around here would know what wheat rust is. But yeah, that stuff is pretty nasty, as far as its ability to kill wheat goes.