Toward an hiv cure: Team develops test to detect hidden virus
Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health announced in Nature Medicine that they've created a test sensitive enough to detect "hidden" HIV, and yet is faster, less labor-intensive and less expensive than the current "gold standard" test. The new Pitt test also revealed that the amount of virus lurking dormant in people who appear to be nearly cured of HIV is about 70-fold larger than previous estimates. "Globally there are substantial efforts to cure people of HIV by finding ways to eradicate this latent reservoir of virus that stubbornly persists in patients , despite our best therapies," said senior author Phalguni Gupta, Ph.D., professor and vice chair of Pitt Public Health's Department of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology. "But those efforts aren't going to progress if we don't have tests that are sensitive and practical enough to tell doctors if someone is truly cured." HIV...