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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new type of treatment that trains immune system cells to better recognize the AIDS virus may help control the deadly and incurable infection, Australian researchers reported on Friday.
Tests on monkeys infected with a similar virus shows the treatment controlled the infection, although it does not cure it, and tests are already planned in people.
The treatment is called OPAL, for Overlapping Peptide-pulsed Autologous Cells, and would be categorized as an immunotherapy technique, or a so-called therapeutic vaccine, Stephen Kent of the University of Melbourne and colleagues said.- Reuters
The treatment may prove most useful for people who strongly suspect they have been recently infected. Standard ELISA/EIA tests, the ones most frequently used for preliminary HIV testing, cannot always immediately detect the presence of HIV antibodies in HIV-infected individuals. This is why a more complex and expensive test, the Western Blot, is usually administered (barring any other post-ELISA/EIA potential HIV transmission), three months following a negative ELISA/EIA result.
There are newer tests, a group called the nucleic acid based tests (NATs), which can conclusively detect seroconversion within 12 days of infection. These tests are much more expensive and complex than the ELISA/EIA/Western Blot series, but may become the standard of testing if OPAL therapy proves successful in humans.