Everyone's heard of it. Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV for short, is one of the most worst viruses a person can contract, and so far, it is impossible to cure. As most people know, it is a sexually transmitted disease, and its only form of transmission, at least so far, is through bodily fluids. Because of this, the virus is unfortunately passed on to a child from its mother and has no control over it. HIV has, at a biological standpoint, an ingenious design that makes it so difficult to develop a counter for it. It works by infecting the immune system, or to be more specific, it attacks the white blood cells and by doing so, it reduces a person's white blood cell count and creates more copies of the virus. Due to this fact, the immune system of humans is not able to overcome this virus, the harder that the white blood cells in a person's body tries to fight it, the weaker it becomes. This leads to another illness known as acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS. Usually, AIDS itself is rarely the cause of death of a person, rather, it is other infections and diseases that the immune system would have fought off otherwise that tend to be the cause of death.
Anyways, as to the purpose of this post. A study has been done that provides a glimmer of hope for everyone who either has had HIV, known someone who has HIV, or has the possibility of getting it. In this study, specifically designed artificial antibodies were created to combat the virus. Different strains of these new antibodies were then injected into nine different monkeys. While not all the strains were effective against HIV, only three of the nine monkeys had HIV after the test, none of the monkeys developed AIDS. So while this might be some years away, it proves that HIV can be beaten if enough time were to be put into it.
By the way, in case you were interested, the article is here.
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