# Is this a legitimate cure for HIV/AIDS?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-a-legitimate-cure-for-hiv-aids/669845
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [September 27, 2013, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-a-legitimate-cure-for-hiv-aids/669845 "2013-09-27T23:23:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Anaglyph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaglyph)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2014, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-a-legitimate-cure-for-hiv-aids/669845/21 "2014-10-13T11:51:57Z")
> [@Bridget\_Burke](#):
>
> How do you know that other Dopers haven’t kept up? We’ve even got some medical people here.
>
> If so, they probably thought “Good, that looks interesting. Let’s see how the studies turn out.” But they thought starting a thread announcing a cure was a bit premature.
>
> (However, there’s nothing wrong with starting a thread to ask a question.)
Here’s a link to the [original publication](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0074414). It is in PLOS one, an open access journal that should be accessible for everybody.
Basically, one of the defences of our body against viral infections is a mechanism by which infected cells commit suicide (apoptosis) to halt virus propagation. Successful viruses, amongst them HIV, have evolved ways to block the trigger for this defensive suicide. The drugs tested render the trigger more sensitive, thus escaping the block and allowing infected cells to die. It is an interesting approach to therapy, however, it remains to be seen how this behaves in intact organisms, where not all cells are equally accessible to the drug. As in cancer therapy, you have to hit every single affected cell without killing too many normal cells, to kill 99.99% of the affected cells is not enough. Whether the therapeutic window (the difference between the lowest dose needed to be effective and the highest dose tolerated by the patient) is wide enough needs to be seen. On the other hand, if you also kill 10% of the healthy cells in cell culture, you barely notice it - in a patient, this would cause very severe side effects. Especially since in an intact organism, the different cell types may show different sensitivities to the drug.
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### Author:  [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2014, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-a-legitimate-cure-for-hiv-aids/669845/22 "2014-10-13T12:17:03Z")
These drugs have cleared a very low bar. Effectiveness and lack of discernable toxicity in cell culture are very different from working safely in a primate/human model.
If you consult the PubMed database, you’ll find thousands upon thousands of articles showing preliminary promising results for various drugs/herbs in cell culture and rodents, but no successful followup studies in humans.
I have not read the article in question, but I’d note that the open-access journal PLOS ONE [doesn’t have quite the reputation](http://occamstypewriter.org/scurry/2012/04/01/plos1-public-library-of-sloppiness/) of, say, _Nature_ or similar traditional journals.
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