AIDS virus: what if patients could become “virus controllers” and stop their treatment?

AIDS Virus: What if patients could become “virus controllers” and stop their treatment?

April 28, 2025

By Camille Gaubert THE Reading 5 min. Subscribers

After stopping antiretroviral treatment, which is theoretically necessary for life, some people living with HIV remain in remission. These "post-treatment controllers" actually carry a specific and—paradoxically—partially unfavorable genetic profile, a French study reveals. What if their profile could be replicated through immunotherapy in other patients?

HIV virus

Colorized transmission electron microscopy image of an HIV-1 virus particle (yellow/gold) budding from the plasma membrane of an infected H9 T cell (purple/green).

NIH-NIAID / IMAGE POINT FRBSIP via AFP

There are 27 of them and they have been officially declared in remission from their HIV infection, the AIDS virus. However, it has been two to twenty years since they (for various reasons) stopped the treatment theoretically necessary for life to prevent the virus from regaining the upper hand. These "extraordinary" cases - according to the researchers themselves - revealed an astonishing genetic predisposition to researchers from the Pasteur Institute, Inserm and AP-HP (Paris hospitals) and published in the journal Med.

Patients who control the virus only after stopping treatment

HIV AIDS

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