Canadian, U.S. scientists say they may have found new weapon in fight against HIV

A team of Canadian and American researchers say they have found the long elusive hiding spot for HIV, the virus which causes AIDS, and believe that combining chemotherapy with anti-retroviral medications could eliminate the virus completely from the human body, according to a report on Canadian Television.

While the advent of highly active anti-retroviral treatment, or HAART, has been effective in eliminating the virus from the blood of HIV infected persons, stop such treatments–which are expensive, often complicated regiments of pill popping, and linked to numerous side effects– and the virus bounces back, destroying the immune system in the process.

Researchers have long puzzled over where the virus is coming from, and now the team has discovered the virus hides in other cells of the immune system. Those cells, called memory cells, allow the virus in, where it locks up the cell and prevents the treatments from getting into the cell.

But now the scientists say by targeting those specialized cells with chemotherapy and thus destroying the cell and the virus, it could be possible to eliminate HIV from the human body altogether.

Researchers caution it could be years before any combination HAART/chemotherapy is available for use in human beings.