No, it's probably in the right place. JAMA and NEJM don't tend to go for the sensational unless there's a big grant-funded study backing it up. (The Lancet acts like they got a bunch of editors from the Sun running their publication.)

J Med Chem is the best you can get in med chem. It will take a couple rounds of studies to see if this stuff actually works. I think there's an equal chance of it working, not working, or killing more patients than HIV.

J.Med.Chem. is a pretty good journal. Second tier, I'd say. Nature and Science would pass on it until several rounds of animal studies are in the books, and JAMA et al would wait for human trials.

However, I too will remain skeptical until I see the data.

Are they talking about a drug that completely suppresses the virus when taken on a regular basis, or a short term course that wipes it out permanently?

I would think that a permanent medication that suppresses the virus as long as you take it, would be a treatment, not a cure.

To be fair, I don't see the word "cure" in the linked article, so "treatment" is more likely -- especially given that medical science, as far as I know, has never successfully cured a viral illness; the best it can do is keep the patient alive and relatively comfortable until his immune system kills it off.

Now, if this treatment gives an HIV patient enough of a boost that his immune system can overcome suppression by the virus, that's some pretty damn serious progress.

A much better article of their work can be found at http://b54.net/-2d (redirect to to nj.com which requires registration, waaaay too many ads, yuck). It isn't clear to me who is making the sensational AIDS cure claims; they don't say anything about "cure" in this article.

The researchers originally submitted to Science and Nature, but were rejected because their work "focused too much on drug development" and wasn't of "sufficient general interest". Whee, I say. Whee.

Their first two DAPY drugs have had reasonably successful Phase I/Phase II trials (do a Google search for details). And because it interferes with numerous replication steps it will be much less likely a resistant virus will appear.

But I would never say "never", because given enough time some mutated form of the virus will eventually overcome any replication blocker... it's very unclear why the body's immune system can't or won't effectively attack the virus, and this is unlikely to be a permanent cure.

I still say the best AIDS cure of all would be prevention, but I guess that's just too darn easy.

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Rabiraj rabiraj@singnet.com.sg
Global Quantech is Igor Smirnoff's company
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