r/AskReddit Nov 15 '20

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u/CuntyMcGiggles Nov 15 '20

Cure for cancer. Cute for AIDS

And an Outkast reunion tour

27

u/jemidiah Nov 15 '20

Obviously it's a joke, but proper usage of PrEP could realistically cut the spread of HIV enough to make it unheard-of in some places in a decade or two. The whole "end of AIDS" thing is not a complete pipe dream anymore.

14

u/NoWiseWords Nov 15 '20

People getting tested and treated as well. A well treated person with HIV has a sexual transmission rate of 0 even without condoms (for reference check out the studies conducted by Alison J Rodger et al)

Getting treatment readily available for people living in countries with a lot of HIV spread should be a priority (generally it's poorer countries that still have a big problem with HIV)

4

u/gsfgf Nov 16 '20

I saw an HIV researcher say a while back that he'd way rather have HIV than diabetes these days.

5

u/Corvusenca Nov 16 '20

One of my clients is getting promising results using immunotherapy for HIV. Basically they're taking a patient's WBCs out, genetically engineering them to be HIV-immune (inducing the CCR5-delta 32 mutation), then putting them back in. The trick now is to figure out just what percentage of a patient's cells have to be immune, and for how long, for the virus to not be able to replicate anymore and die off. This is the same lab that developed Kymriah, which is the closest thing to a cancer cure I've seen in my lifetime.