 Today, at the International AIDS Conference 2020, there was an announcement that there might quite possibly be the first person to be cured of HIV using only pharmaceutical drugs. Is this the HIV cure we've been waiting for? Who is this person? What drugs were they given? And what does this mean for the rest of us living with HIV? Keep watching this video to find out the answer to these questions and a whole lot more. So this story centers around a 34, 35, 36-year-old Brazilian. It depends what sources I go to, what age this person is. But this person is between 34 to 36 years old, is a male, I'm assuming cisgendered. And this patient was given an intense multi-drug cocktail of ARVs, as well as nicotinamide, which is a water-soluble version of vitamin B3 or niacin. So my understanding is that this patient was on a 48-week course of treatment and a year after he finished taking medicine, he has been shown to not have any signs of the virus. And that means there's no trace of the virus in his blood, and there's no antibodies when they do an antibody test. This is significant because for a lot of us, we are undetectable. The medicine does its job, and there is no longer any HIV that's detectable in the bloodstream. However, if we were to get an antibody test, we would still show antibodies of HIV. And the reason for this is because although the medicine is able to destroy free-flowing HIV in our body, there are reservoirs, as it were, or places where the virus is able to hide within cells in the body, in tissue, and the medicine can't get to that virus. And that's been the trick. Apparently, with the addition of Maravarok, which is an ARV, as well as the addition of Nicotinamide, those two things are believed to help extract the virus from within cells, at which point the ARVs can do their job and kill the virus. So we have this 34, 35, 36-year-old Brazilian patient diagnosed in 2012. They started on their ARVs, I believe it was four months after treatment, and subsequently ended up being part of this trial. They took part in this 48-week course of treatment. I believe they may or may not have gone back to their ARVs for a time after that treatment was done. Then they stopped all treatment altogether in March of 2019. And since then, they have received tests for HIV every three weeks. Those have shown that there is no HIV virus and no antibodies. So here's a couple of things to consider. There were, I believe, four other participants in this trial. Those four, it was unsuccessful. They have since, after not being on treatment, their viral load has gone back up. They have HIV, they are not curative HIV. So out of the five people, only one person experienced this. So this is why there is some hesitation in the science and medical community right now. And there would be, regardless, even if they were all HIV negative at this point, there would still be some hesitance to say for certain that this is an HIV cure. There has to be follow-up and it has to be duplicated. So one reason why perhaps one person, this one patient, has been cured of it is maybe because they were diagnosed shortly after they were infected with HIV and treated shortly after being infected. So like I said, there are reservoirs where HIV likes to hide out and evade the medicine that would otherwise kill it and destroy it. Now when you're initially infected with HIV, those particles of the virus don't necessarily have a chance to burrow themselves into other cells and create these little reservoirs. So if you're able to treat the HIV fast enough, then you may not ever get infected, which is the purpose of things like PEP, which is post-exposure prophylaxis, if you've ever heard of that. If you've been exposed to HIV, you know you've been exposed. You want to go to the hospital or to a doctor and get PEP within the first 72 hours and that can prevent permanent HIV transmission. So that's one possibility that this person was able to treat their HIV in the very beginning when they were diagnosed, when they were infected with HIV right away and so that they never would have had HIV to begin with. And so it's just a coincidence that it falls in line with this trial. Another possibility is that there's some genetic variance in his body, in his immune system that allows him to, in conjunction with the treatment, combat the virus and become successfully cured or perhaps it's the strain of HIV. There's so many variables at this point that we can't jump to any conclusions. Also if it did in fact cure this patient, it only cured one out of the five people and so we want to understand why it didn't apply to everyone. So although this is something really to be optimistic about, we can't take the ball too far. We got to be a little bit cautious, cautiously optimistic as I like to say and acknowledge it for what it is but then also try not to jump to any big ranging conclusions and give people false hope that there's a cure right now because we're not quite there. But I do want to offer the hope that this is a possible cure and also if there is some genetic difference in this particular person that allows him to receive the treatment and have it be more effective against HIV, that information alone can be invaluable to scientists and researchers in figuring out a cure for HIV that is going to be widely applicable to the general population. So that information is something that could be very, very helpful and very interesting. So at the end of the day, regardless, we are continuing to move closer and closer to a cure. It's also noted and people sometimes bring up the fact that there are two other people that have been cured of HIV. Now the circumstances around these two are that they both suffered from a varying kind of cancer. So they were undergoing cancer treatment which essentially destroys the immune system in the process and because the immune system was in such a depressed state and they happened to have HIV, it was worth the risk to give them this bone marrow transplant. And they received bone marrow from someone who had a natural resistance to HIV and that allowed them to incorporate that resistance into their own body and therefore fight off their HIV infection. Bone marrow transplants are intensely invasive and they require your immune system to be incredibly depleted in order for your body to accept this new bone marrow. So that's why this isn't a procedure that can be applicable to the general population and we have to find other avenues that are much less invasive that are going to be a feasible cure for everyone. Anyway, I wanted to share this with you guys as quickly as I could. This is very exciting and interesting news no matter how you look at it and please I want you to walk away from this with a little bit of extra hope that you might not have had yesterday. We are finding solutions and different avenues and different ways of dealing with this widely virus and I know we'll get there soon and we'll get there eventually so and I will keep you updated as much as I can with information as it comes to the best of my ability and if there's more information that pops up about this specific case I'll definitely present that to you guys. I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you found it informative and I hope you leave feeling a little bit more inspired and a little bit more helpful. Please share this with anyone who might benefit from this and who you might think might need a little bit of encouragement where HIV cure goes. Okay, like this video if you liked it, subscribe and I will see you guys soon. Peace.