Quote:
Originally Posted by Splash
They say the reason HIV is so difficult to find a "cure" for is because it keeps mutating. According to the link of how viruses are halted, does that mean earlier strains of HIV are "cured"? I have not heard of ANY HIV being "cured". It seems the mutating factor will be difficult to incorporate when a cure is found for any one strain. Am I understanding this correctly or could one cure maybe help more than one strain?
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It's correct that one of the reasons HIV is hard to find this "cure" for is because of the mutation rate.
In regards to your question about the earlier strains of HIV, viruses don't really function in a way where this would be at all clinically functional.
For your final question, a vaccine would need to "attack" a piece of the HIV virus that doesn't rapidly mutate, so that it would still be functioning after clinical trials are completed, such as a glycoprotein. That's what this vaccine likely does. So, yes, the cure would have to help multiple strains. HIV mutates too quickly for a vaccine like a flu virus has.