Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
March 19, 2024, 03:15:19 am

Login with username, password and session length


Members
Stats
  • Total Posts: 772784
  • Total Topics: 66296
  • Online Today: 267
  • Online Ever: 5484
  • (June 18, 2021, 11:15:29 pm)
Users Online
Users: 0
Guests: 234
Total: 234

Welcome


Welcome to the POZ Community Forums, a round-the-clock discussion area for people with HIV/AIDS, their friends/family/caregivers, and others concerned about HIV/AIDS.  Click on the links below to browse our various forums; scroll down for a glance at the most recent posts; or join in the conversation yourself by registering on the left side of this page.

Privacy Warning:  Please realize that these forums are open to all, and are fully searchable via Google and other search engines. If you are HIV positive and disclose this in our forums, then it is almost the same thing as telling the whole world (or at least the World Wide Web). If this concerns you, then do not use a username or avatar that are self-identifying in any way. We do not allow the deletion of anything you post in these forums, so think before you post.

  • The information shared in these forums, by moderators and members, is designed to complement, not replace, the relationship between an individual and his/her own physician.

  • All members of these forums are, by default, not considered to be licensed medical providers. If otherwise, users must clearly define themselves as such.

  • Forums members must behave at all times with respect and honesty. Posting guidelines, including time-out and banning policies, have been established by the moderators of these forums. Click here for “Do I Have HIV?” posting guidelines. Click here for posting guidelines pertaining to all other POZ community forums.

  • We ask all forums members to provide references for health/medical/scientific information they provide, when it is not a personal experience being discussed. Please provide hyperlinks with full URLs or full citations of published works not available via the Internet. Additionally, all forums members must post information which are true and correct to their knowledge.

  • Product advertisement—including links; banners; editorial content; and clinical trial, study or survey participation—is strictly prohibited by forums members unless permission has been secured from POZ.

To change forums navigation language settings, click here (members only), Register now

Para cambiar sus preferencias de los foros en español, haz clic aquí (sólo miembros), Regístrate ahora

Finished Reading This? You can collapse this or any other box on this page by clicking the symbol in each box.

Author Topic: drug used to treat alcoholism found to activate dormant HIV  (Read 3519 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline AusShep

  • Member
  • Posts: 526
drug used to treat alcoholism found to activate dormant HIV
« on: November 18, 2015, 11:32:55 pm »
Interesting initial study that an anti-alcolism drug wakes up dormant HIV.

http://www.sciencealert.com/alcoholism-drug-brings-dormant-hiv-virus-out-of-hiding

A drug that’s used to treat alcoholism has been found to activate dormant HIV cells, dragging them out of hiding so they can be destroyed. When given to 30 HIV positive patients in the US and Australia in a three-day trial, the common anti-alcohol drug, disulfiram, appears to ‘wake up’ HIV cells without causing any harmful side-effects.

Sold commercially as Antabuse, the drug causes people to vomit when they consume alcohol, which makes a pretty strong case to never drink again. But now it seems it can also overcome one of the greatest hurdles to curing HIV/AIDS: HIV latency.


HIV latency allows the virus to lay dormant and undetected in various hiding places around the body, safe from the effects of current antiretroviral drugs (ART) that can only treat HIV in the bloodstream.

Scientists had already identified a class of drugs called histone deacetylase that can kick dormant HIV into gear, but they inflict too many toxic side effects to be a viable treatment option. That’s what makes disulfiram so promising - no harmful side-effects have been detected.

"This trial clearly demonstrates that disulfiram is not toxic and is safe to use, and could quite possibly be the game changer we need," lead researcher, Sharon Lewin from the University of Melbourne in Australia, told Reuters. "The dosage of disulfiram we used provided more of a tickle than a kick to the virus, but this could be enough. Even though the drug was only given for three days, we saw a clear increase in [the] virus in [blood] plasma, which was very encouraging."

Current antiretroviral drugs can keep HIV in the blood in check, but patients have to take them for the rest of their lives in case the dormant virus re-emerges. Disulfiram appears to flush everything out into the open, which is just the first step in the search for a cure.

Once the team confirms that the drug is definitely flushing out the dormant HIV - Andy Coghlan reports for New Scientist that they interpret an increase in HIV gene expression in their study group as a sign that it had been woken up - the next step will be to find a drug that can kill them once they hit the bloodstream. While antiretroviral drugs can stop these cells from multiplying, they can’t destroy them.

"This is a very important step as we have demonstrated we can wake up the sleeping virus with a safe medicine that is easily taken orally once a day. Now we need to work out how to get rid of the infected cell. A kick-start to the immune system might help," one of the team, Julian Elliott from the University of Melbourne, said in a press release. "We have an enormous amount still to learn about how to ultimately eradicate this very smart virus."

The study has been published in The Lancet HIV.

Offline Ptrk3

  • Global Moderator
  • Member
  • Posts: 2,792
Re: drug used to treat alcoholism found to activate dormant HIV
« Reply #1 on: November 18, 2015, 11:47:45 pm »
Thanks for the information and link.   This seems to be potentially a big deal, especially since Antabuse is already FDA-approved, etc.  Bit by bit, things seem to be coming together.
HIV 101 - Basics
HIV 101
You can read more about Transmission and Risks here:
HIV Transmission and Risks
You can read more about Testing here:
HIV Testing
You can read more about Treatment-as-Prevention (TasP) here:
HIV TasP
You can read more about HIV prevention here:
HIV prevention
You can read more about PEP and PrEP here
PEP and PrEP

Offline Jeff G

  • Administrator
  • Member
  • Posts: 17,064
  • How am I doing Beren ?
Re: drug used to treat alcoholism found to activate dormant HIV
« Reply #2 on: November 19, 2015, 08:03:57 am »
Doctors used Antabuse on some of us guys in the mid 80's as an off label treatment as it was known to have a positive effect on the CD4 count. I took it for about 6 months.
HIV 101 - Basics
HIV 101
You can read more about Transmission and Risks here:
HIV Transmission and Risks
You can read more about Testing here:
HIV Testing
You can read more about Treatment-as-Prevention (TasP) here:
HIV TasP
You can read more about HIV prevention here:
HIV prevention
You can read more about PEP and PrEP here
PEP and PrEP

Offline SmartArg

  • Member
  • Posts: 9
Re: drug used to treat alcoholism found to activate dormant HIV
« Reply #3 on: November 29, 2015, 09:19:27 am »
Yes, disulfiram reactivates hiv reservoirs, and HDAC inhibitors such as romidepsin and panobinostat do the same thing. What is next? Testing all the drugs in the market to see if they actívate the latent reservoirs? The "kick" part (kick and kill strategy) seems to be pretty much solved. Why dont they go for the "kill" part?
2017: "peniciline activates hiv transcription so it could become part of an eradication strategy in future clinical trials"
2018: "Valium activates hiv transcription so it could become part of an eradication strategy in future clinical trials"
2019: choose a drug....
2020: choose a drug...

Offline Jeff G

  • Administrator
  • Member
  • Posts: 17,064
  • How am I doing Beren ?
Re: drug used to treat alcoholism found to activate dormant HIV
« Reply #4 on: November 29, 2015, 09:38:58 am »
Welcome to the forum SmartArg, please introduce yourself. Are you HIV positive ?
HIV 101 - Basics
HIV 101
You can read more about Transmission and Risks here:
HIV Transmission and Risks
You can read more about Testing here:
HIV Testing
You can read more about Treatment-as-Prevention (TasP) here:
HIV TasP
You can read more about HIV prevention here:
HIV prevention
You can read more about PEP and PrEP here
PEP and PrEP

Offline Jim Allen

  • Administrator
  • Member
  • Posts: 22,193
  • Threads: @jim16309
    • Social Media: Threads
Re: drug used to treat alcoholism found to activate dormant HIV
« Reply #5 on: November 29, 2015, 10:02:55 am »
Yes, disulfiram reactivates hiv reservoirs, and HDAC inhibitors such as romidepsin and panobinostat do the same thing. What is next? Testing all the drugs in the market to see if they actívate the latent reservoirs? The "kick" part (kick and kill strategy) seems to be pretty much solved. Why dont they go for the "kill" part?
2017: "peniciline activates hiv transcription so it could become part of an eradication strategy in future clinical trials"
2018: "Valium activates hiv transcription so it could become part of an eradication strategy in future clinical trials"
2019: choose a drug....
2020: choose a drug...

To be honest each time something new is learned i see it as a good thing, who knows down the line it may create different insights, understanding and even new lines of research.

Loads of research is ongoing to all the different aspects of this virus & treatments and that includes the kick part. Just because a team looked into and found out something new on the kick part does not mean nobody is looking into other aspects and i don't see any reason to be negative that someone tried and discovered something new.

1 thing i do know is 37 + Million people have HIV so no single treatment solution or in this case "Kick" option would ever fit all of them so to find and test multiple avenues is surly a good thing.     
HIV 101 - Everything you need to know
HIV 101
Read more about Testing here:
HIV Testing
Read about Treatment-as-Prevention (TasP) here:
HIV TasP
You can read about HIV prevention here:
HIV prevention
Read about PEP and PrEP here
PEP and PrEP

My Instagram
Threads

 


Terms of Membership for these forums
 

© 2024 Smart + Strong. All Rights Reserved.   terms of use and your privacy
Smart + Strong® is a registered trademark of CDM Publishing, LLC.