Resistance to HIV

Good afternoon everyone!

I'm sure all of you are familiar w/ HIV. Therefore, I'm going to begin w/ a quick overview. Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a lentivirus (a member of the retrovirus family) that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in humans in which the immune system begins to fail, leading to life-threatening opportunistic infections. HIV infection in humans is considered pandemic by WHO. From 1981 to 2006, AIDS killed more than 25 million people. HIV infects about 0.6% of the world's population. In 2005 alone, AIDS claimed an estimated 2.4–3.3 million lives, of which more than 570,000 were children. According to current estimates, HIV is set to infect 90 million people in Africa, resulting in a minimum estimate of 18 million orphans.



Just think about that for a second...90 MILLION people will be infected, resulting in 18 MILLION orphans. Those numbers are staggering. With that being said, it's evident that we, as a people, need to come together and try to figure out a cure against HIV. I feel very strongly about that b/c what I wouldn't want for myself, I wouldn't want for others; and 18 million kids becoming orphans is something I refuse to accept.
With that being said, as I was talking w/ my fellow colleagues, I learned that researchers at the University Of Illinois are in the works of identifying whether exposure to certain viruses can build a natural resistance to HIV. From my understanding, they're examining genome scans of American forest populations that appear to have evolved a natural resistance to HIV via exposure to chimpanzee immunodeficiency viruses. My hopes are that through this research, we'll gain better understanding of the natural mechanisms of the HIV virus and as a result researchers will be able to develop new drugs of HIV vaccines. What are your thoughts? What outcome would you like to see from this project? Anyways, feel free to leave any comments you may have. I'd love to hear from you. Well, I hope everyone's having a great day and I'll ttyl. Take care. Peace, Love, and God Bless. This is 'thedoc' and I'm signing out. 1.