I've heard in a lot of my classes that HIV is nearly impossible to make a vaccine for because of how rapidly it mutates (among other reasons), but I've been wondering something for a while. It's my understanding that HIV can only infect macrophages and T-lymphocytes, more specifically CD4+ T-helper cells. And I've also heard that HIV is also uncurable because there is always a small percentage of the virus that remains dormant inside its host cell, making it unaffected by antiviral drugs.

 

That got me thinking though, because I've also heard that HIV is a very weak and labile virus when outside a host cell. So would it be possible to cure an HIV infection by literally starving the virus to death, so to speak? That is, could you somehow completely wipe out all of the person's macrophages and T-cells (or just irradiate their bone marrow) so that the virus no longer has any cells to infect. Then the doctors could administer aggressive anti-retroviral therapy to completely eradicate the virus from the person's body, and finally, allow their immune system to either heal itself, or do a bone marrow transplant to restart it for them?

 

Now admittedly, this form of treatment would be ridiculously impractical, as well as dangerous and expensive. But I don't really see any reason why it wouldn't work in theory. In fact, I think I remember reading that they've done something similar to this in a person, and they actually cured him if HIV.

Edited April 14, 201213 yr by Fanghur

I doubt this is feasible. It would be extremely hard to get rid of all infected cells, and with only a few cells remaining, the virus could multiply again after a bone marrow transplant. Meanwhile, you leave the patient even more vulnerable to attacks of other pathogens. Personally, I think it's better to look at how to selectively kill infected cells or to make T cells 'immune' for infection.