A good year for AIDS research (Year in review)

With yesterday’s announcement that a man was cured by doctors in Germany of AIDS, it has been as good a year for the disease as the world has seen in awhile. Earlier this year, scientists at CAPRISA showed there was a 39% reduction in new HIV infections for women who used what is called a microbicide vaginal gel. Not long after, another group of scientists found that men who take a daily anti-retroviral pill called Truvada reduced their chance of infection at varying rates (from 44 to 90 percent), depending on how often they took the pill.

Earlier this year, I started working at Columbia University’s epidemiology department (which has on its faculty some of the CAPRISA doctors), so it is very exciting to be some place where this research is front and center. On a personal level, a relative of mine died of AIDS many years ago, and I remember being baffled as an eight-year-old by the thought of a disease that couldn’t be cured, living as I was during one of the best eras of public health for developed countries (no flu epidemics, typhoid, etc.).

Yet, the AIDS news, as good as it is raises some questions. My main question about the cure that was found is whether many people would elect to go through it, instead of anti-retroviral treatment. Because it was a bone marrow transplant for leukemia, it is pretty intense:

It involves destroying the person’s native immune system with powerful drugs and radiation, then replacing it with donor cells to grow a new immune system.

Anyway, it has been a good year for AIDS as far as science goes. Hopefully public health prevention efforts will still get the funding and attention they deserve, in a climate where the perception that AIDS has been cured has not yet matched the reality.