The battle against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection is still ongoing, and science has not stopped the search for that one effective cure for the disease.
The latest update on the cure for HIV comes from a team of researchers from the University of Melbourne in Australia, who collaborated with the University of California in San Francisco, The Guardian noted.
The study, which was published on The Lancet HIV last week, discovered that the drug disulfiram has the ability to spot dormant HIV cells and contribute to the eradication of the infection.
Disulfiram is currently marketed as a treatment for alcoholism. It works by making the patient feel a temporary sensitivity to alcohol. A person who takes disulfiram will vomit once he or she also consumes alcohol at the same time.
However, in the case of the trials by the researchers, disulfiram can be given to HIV patients without causing adverse effects.
The researchers gave 30 HIV-positive individuals, who are already on antiretroviral therapy (ART), an increasing dose of disulfiram for three days. On the first day, patients took 500 mg; the second day, 1,000 mg; and the third day, 2,000 mg.
The trials revealed that giving 2,000 mg of the drug activated the HIV that lies dormant somewhere in the body. The good thing is that the drug is noted to spare the patients from unpleasant side effects.
Modern antiretroviral drugs have been designed as a powerful weapon against HIV. However, the virus can still hide, lie dormant, and reawaken once the patient stops the treatment.
So as a strategy, scientists would lure the virus out of dormancy so it can be eliminated once and for all.
Previous studies have already tackled the kind of approach in which HIV is activated so that it can be targeted, Medical News Today reported. Scientists led by Prof. Sharon Lewin said that they found a difficult workaround on the approach because of the side effects.
Nonetheless, Lewin said that "disulfiram is not toxic and is safe to use, and could quite possibly be the game changer" in HIV research, according to The Guardian's report.
Even though Lewin admitted that the trials were only for three days, they observed a distinct increase in HIV levels in the bloodstream that suggests "encouraging" results.
