Researchers find mutation that helps prevent HIV from becoming AIDS

Researchers have discovered a genetic mutation in people with HIV which may assist them in preventing the disease from progressing, reports The Philadelphia Enquirer.

The study looked thousands of HIV-positive individuals who have been able to control their infection without the assistance of anti-retroviral medications. Those individuals have been identified in literature as elite controllers, or long term non-progressors.

In HIV disease progression, the virus eventually overwhelms the body’s immune system by hijacking CD4 or T-Helper Cells which are intended to destroy foreign bodies such as bacteria and viruses. But the virus actually hijacks those cells and turns them into viral factories. But researchers have long known that they are people are successful in preventing the virus from replicating out of control to the point the virus destroys the bodies ability to fight disease.

Now researchers say that 1 in 300 people infected with the virus have this genetic mutation allows their bodies to identify HIV as a foreign element in the body and destroy it, thus controlling it.

This news could lead to new approaches to treating the infection.