Researchers and clinicians from six continents met recently at a conference hosted by the journals Cell and The Lancet to discuss steps to eliminate AIDS globally.
Keynote speaker Anthony S. Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said an AIDS-free world will require certain preventive strategies, including the expansion of HIV testing, circumcision, treatment as prevention, and prevention of mother-to-child transmission.
“Biomedical interventions need to meld with human behavior and social determinants to achieve an AIDS-free world,” Fauci said in a press release.
Several speakers discussed barriers to the shared goal of eliminating AIDS, including the latent HIV reservoir in infected patients, which was estimated by a recent study to be 60 times larger than previously thought. However, Warner C. Greene, MD, PhD, director of virology and immunology research at Gladstone Institutes, said new research has linked two pathogenic hallmarks of HIV infection – CD4 T-cell depletion and chronic inflammation – a hopeful development in the search for a cure.
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