Doctors in France have found the first evidence that a drug normally used to treat lung, kidney or skin cancer may be able to eradicate HIV-infected cells in people with the AIDS virus.<\/p>\n
In a case described as potentially exciting by scientists who also advised caution, doctors said a 51-year old man given nivolumab <\/strong>? sold as Opdivo <\/strong>by Bristol-Myers Squibb<\/strong> ? saw a \u201cdrastic and persistent decrease\u201d in the reservoirs of cells where HIV hides and evades standard treatments.<\/p>\n The case, at the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital AP-HP in Paris, was detailed in a report in the Annals of Oncology journal, where the same doctors also gave a case study of another patient treated with Opdivo who did not show any HIV benefit.<\/p>\n \u201cWe must remain careful, especially because this is only one case,\u201d said Jean-Philippe Spano, a professor and head of the medical oncology department at the Paris hospital. \u201cThis is the first case of such a drastic decrease of the HIV reservoir. We have another case where there was no decrease.\u201d<\/p>\n Some 37 million people worldwide have the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS. Scientists have for years been trying to find a way of clearing HIV reservoirs with a view to being able to eradicate the virus completely and cure AIDS.<\/p>\n These reservoirs of HIV-infected cells are found in the immune system in places like the brain, bone marrow and genital tract. They lie hidden and dormant, and can\u2019t be reached with standard anti-retroviral therapy HIV treatments.<\/p>\n If standard treatment is stopped or interrupted, the reservoirs seize the chance and the virus starts to replicate and infect more cells, rendering the patient\u2019s immune system too weak to fight back.<\/p>\n Opdivo, or nivolumab is a PD-1 inhibitor, designed to help the body\u2019s own immune system fend off cancer by blocking a protein called PD-1. It is one of several cancer immunotherapy drugs made by drug makers including Merck, Roche and AstraZeneca that work in similar way.<\/p>\n In this case, the 51-year-old man had received 31 injections of nivolumab every 14 days since December 2016. He was diagnosed HIV-positive in 1995 and diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer in May 2015.<\/p>\n After his first injection, the man\u2019s HIV infection load, which had been low, increased progressively up until day 45, then fell back again. At the same time, the doctors explained \u2013 the activity of his immune system increased.<\/p>\n By day 120, the treatment had \u201cresulted in the drastic decrease in the HIV reservoir.<\/p>\n Difficult to speculate and caution is advised<\/strong><\/p>\n Andrew Freedman, an infectious diseases expert at Britain\u2019s Cardiff University, said the case was \u201cpotentially exciting\u201d. But like others, he advised caution.<\/p>\n \u201dIt\u2019s difficult to speculate at this stage why the second patient did not show the same response,\u201c he said in an emailed comment. \u201dDifferences in the size of the latent reservoir or genetic differences between individuals, affecting their ability to mount immune responses to HIV, might be important factors.\u00a0(Source: Reuters)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Doctors in France have found the first evidence that a drug normally used to treat lung, kidney or skin cancer may be able to eradicate HIV-infected cells in people with the AIDS virus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,42],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4715"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4715"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4748,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4715\/revisions\/4748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}