HIV

A recent study has proclaimed that the deadly AIDS virus, HIVdefine, can be ‘stopped dead in its tracks’, by making use of a revolutionary technique for ‘silencing’ genesdefine. This discovery has raised hopes of developing a treatment for AIDS without the use of potentially toxic anti-viral drugs.

RNA interference, a phenomenon wherein genesdefine are artificially silenced by using a natural molecular switch in the cell, can keep a check on the replication of HIVdefine in the human blood cells. This is what the scientists have discovered as an outcome of this study. The findings of the study are based on HIV-infected laboratory rodents. Scientists mixed the silenced RNAs with the antibody carriers and then injected them into the veins of the animals which carry human cells rather than their own.

Professor Premlata Shankar of Texas Tech University, who carried out the work at Harvard Medical School in Boston, was quoted as saying, “RNA interference has great potential as an antiviral treatment…We think it has real promise, but there is a lot more to be done.”

U.S. researchers stated that their prevention programs for AIDS will have its focus around the gay and bisexual community.

Half of all new HIVdefine infections in the United States consist of gay and bisexual men. Such young men who tend to indulge in binge drinking and are heavily into drug use are most likely to transmit the HIV virus to uninfected people.

Dr. Kenneth Mayer, an infectious disease specialist at Brown University in Rhode Island states that young people often take risks without thinking about the consequences. He quotes, “When one drinks or uses other substances, inhibitions are lowered, making people more likely to engage in risky behavior like unprotected sex.”

The researchers conducted a study over 200 HIV-positive men who were either gay or bisexual living in the United States.

In an exclusive interview in Mombasa on Thursday, the Kenyan scientist Arthur Obel announced that he had yet again, discovered a new drug for treating HIVdefine positivedefine people. He claimed that his new drug named OSCean could reduce an infected person’s viral load to zero.

Prof Obel said “The drug shall be launched on the 16th of June in Nairobi, and the initial treatments shall be offered free of charge for as long as the stocks can last,” soon after opening the Third East African Project Management Summit at the Sarova Whitesands.

Obel has been asked by the Medical Services assistant minister Danson Mungatana to immediately take the drug to be tested for efficacy by the Pharmacy and Poisons Board. “This is the procedure that all drugs in our market are expected to follow before they are put on the market,” Mr. Mungatana said.

He further said it was “impossible” at this stage to state whether the newly discovered drug works, until testing was carried out by professionals.