POZ Community Forums
Main Forums => Living With HIV => Topic started by: MYSTERY on September 30, 2008, 06:52:15 pm
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What do you think treatment will be like in the next 5-10 years. Do you think things will be pretty much the same with a few new drugs in the existing classes. Or do you think there may be some dramatic improvements that will change the course of this illness. Just kind of curious to hear peoples thoughts on this subject. ;D
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My thoughts:
- in 5 years, nothing revolutionary, 'cause there isn't anything revolutionary in current trials
- in 10 years, I think I could answer only in 2013.
Anyway, time multiplies if each researcher disregards other researchers' work, and that is what is happening now (and in the past).
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I'm also hoping for a major breakthrough. Even better formulations with less pills, low chance of resistance virtually no side effects. Drugs that would attack viral reservoirs not only replicating virus. But only time will tell how far we'll get, still research is the only way to find out for sure.
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I'm still relatively new, and I have come to see that predications are tricky.
But it's nice to think about possiblities.
From what I can gather, I'd predict that the near future will be about refining the dosing and combination strategies with existing drugs, with refinement of the current ones ongoing in labs and trials.
I hope that in the not too distant future there can be drugs with fewer or no side effects and toxicities, and that researchers come to understand new ways to fight the virus on newer fronts.
I also hope that soon there are advances in treatment for long termers, more manageable and effective.
As for 10 years, too hard to say, but I think the immune and gene therapies are going to interesting to watch. And a greater understanding of long-term HAART.
Anyway, there's my two cents, and it's hopeful to think about advances.
Auspoz
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oops :)
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I was diagnosed HIV+ in 1994, a group of physicians were offering a series of seminars on "the future of HIV treatment", sponsored by groups such as APLA and The Center in Long Beach. In the day, these physicians were the movers and the shakers in HIV treatment and pretty much everything they said has happened.
I chose my ID doc from that group, I moved up North and with doctor's children in Medical School, he and his wife moved to Africa to start a clinic. He did refer me to my current ID doc, Marshall Kubota who is considered to be the best HIV doc in California and is one of the 50 Most Important People of the 20th Century in Sonoma County for his work in HIV treatment.
I have appointments with Dr. Kubota every three months, within this year, he said, I will not die of HIV/AIDS, he expects me to live to see 85 and die of a heart attack. He says, back then a person living with HIV could be expected to die in 5 years but now, we need to treat HIV patients for a larger range of illness or conditions which also need to be treated. He has added Linsinopril 10 MG, Sinvastatin 40 MG, and Gabapentin 300 MG to my daily regimen for blood pressure, heart and PN, Osteopenia. He is the doctor and my job is to take the pills. ;D Have the best day
Michael
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MMembers of this forum much more knowledgeable can comment about coming treatments. I wanted to express that my ID doctor was as optimistic as Somona's. I seroconverted this year. Even when it was discovered I can't fight the virus due to genetic flaws in my immunity, and was put rapidly on HAART, my doctor remains optimistic.
What I would like to see is ever more synergy among mental health professionals, alternative medicine practitioners, HIV docs, and other specialist docs. Barring amazing drug developments, isn't the total package of professionals treating the total person the best way to live well with this virus???
It would be great as well if in the near future, all hiv+ people around the world desperately in need treatment could have access. Better than that, all people desiring treatment at anytime after seroconversion could have it, as well.
So a wonderful development in treatment would be some international task force / research consortium finding a solution to get the best durgs available in generic forms. I understand too much of what is dumped in the developing world in recent years is second- or third-rate HAART, no longer prescribed in the first world. A scandal.
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Same as another poster... in five years, more of the same. May be a new NNRTI available without making you feel like your somewhat senile.
In ten years, probably still not much available that's new... but I believe the pipeline could be chock full of l treatments based on new ways of inhibiting the virus.
In fifteen years, I think some of thesel treatments will have become a reality.
I think a rule of thumb is about fifteen years from lab to pharmacy shelf so some of these breakthroughs you read about in the "treatments" forum will become a reality in 10-15 years.
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We know the virus never leaves our bodies, and as it ages....it gets smarter and mutates. So, I think there will be more drugs available to fight the virus at different angles. We just need to be one step ahead of the virus. I really feel we will all die of something totally different than HIV...just will smaller wallets. LOL
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I agree with the above posters that said their Dr. said long life for all us most all us now, the real dangers are cofactors to hiv like smoking cigarettes, heavy alcholol and hard drug use, this can make things worse
my hope my dream is that in the next 3-9 years a giant discovery will mean a therapy vaccine or gene therapy or siRNA therapy or many new less toxic meds (i know of one california company that has a patented way of actually fusing two drug molecules together, one with no side effects to an hiv med with medium/mild side effects and when in the body there are almost no side effects because the body processes the molecule as the one part)
just in the last few weeks there have been major small steps every week
i have stopped even posting all the great new almost daily breakthrus
but here is one out of california today
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081002171916.htm
http://chianti.ucsd.edu/idekerlab/
HIV has just nine genes, coding for 15 proteins, compared to bacteria, which harbor several thousand genes, or humans, with over 20,000 genes," said Chanda, associate professor in the Infectious & Inflammatory Disease Center at Burnham and an adjunct faculty member at Salk. "We have known for a long time that HIV hijacks our cellular proteins to complete its life cycle. This study now lays out its flight plan." "The integration of these systems-based analyses allowed us to build, for the first time, a functionally validated map of host-pathogen interactions that are required for viral infection," said Renate König, Ph.D., of Burnham, the first-author on the study.
Other coauthors on the study included Drs. Daniel Elleder of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Yingyao Zhou of the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation, Tracy Diamond and Frederic Bushman of University of Pennsylvania, and Trey Ideker of the University of California, San Diego.
The study was supported by a grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the University of Pennsylvania Center for AIDS research.