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Why would it deplete the inactive form of the virus? The drug prevents HIV from including itself into the DNA of host cells, but if the virus has already accomp
by est31 6y ago
Why would it deplete the inactive form of the virus? The drug prevents HIV from including itself into the DNA of host cells, but if the virus has already accomplished this and is a provirus inside resting T cells, this drug can't do anything about it. It can only prevent this from happening in the first place.
- onychomys 6y agoIn reservoirs, there's ongoing cryptic replication, which would be blocked by drug. That is, the virus wakes up every so often, replicates (killing the host cell), infects another cell nearby, and then goes back to sleep. Blocking any one of those steps would eliminate the reservoir. There's actually some pretty promising work that's been done on how to wake up all the virus at once, because if you do that while the person is on ART, the reservoir would be entirely eliminated!
- est31 6y agoOh cool, didn't know that. That makes it way more promising then!
- pmiller2 6y agoIt seems like waking up all the dormant virus at once could cause some serious problems, especially if ART isn't 100% effective. Is this an actual concern, does it not happen, or is it just not an issue in practice?