Scientists have made two major breakthroughs in how HIV virus works and they are two big steps in the battle between man and HIV. The battle against AIDS and HIV is far from over though.

University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers Michael Simpson and Roy Dar, with colleague Leor Weinberger had earlier made inroads in finding out how an HIV infects and affects an immune cell. University of California, San Diego extended their research and discovered that an infected cell could be in one of two states. The two states being active, where it replicates and destroys the host cell. The other state being dormant or latent where the cell is waiting for some sort of trigger to replicate. In the later state, the cell is not infecting other cells or affecting the immune system.

The latent cell is just waiting to be triggered by some form of genetic pulse. Eventually the pulse triggers the cell and the latent cell becomes active. Researchers observed that the pulse needs to exists for a certain amount of time for the trigger to happen. So if through some controlled measures, the trigger can be held back or prevented, the cell would be in a latent state forever and HIV can be controlled. However observation of the switch phenomenon is very complex and relies on observing the noise produced by the cell.

The other research breakthrough: QC - Canada-US research team has solved how a protein in some people’s DNA guards them against killer immune diseases such as HIV. “Our group has found how the key protein, FOX03a, is vital to the survival of central memory cells that are defective in HIV-infected individuals even if they are treated,” added Dr Sekaly, the lead researcher.