Air date: March 29, 2009

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Doctors are testing a new gene therapy that could immunize some people against HIV. But this new therapy isn't a cure all. Jeremy Shere has more.

Remember when Magic Johnson, the famous basketball player, announced that he had HIV? That was in 1991, and it was a really big deal. Because back then, a diagnosis of HIV was pretty much a death sentence, or at least that’s what most people thought.

But since then, over the past few decades, HIV and AIDS treatment has come a long way. Magic is still alive and well, and people with the disease are living longer and healthier lives.

Now there are always new treatments in the works. For example, you may have heard that scientists have found a mutant gene that protects some people against HIV and hope to use the gene to create something like an HIV vaccine.

But Kenneth Fife, professor of medicine and immunology at the Indiana University School of Medicine, says that we shouldn’t put too much stock in HIV gene therapy. First, because it’s not certain that the therapy will work and because the mutant gene that protects against HIV causes other problems.

"The people who have this naturally appear to be normal but they do seem to have a higher incidents of select infections that are usually severe."

So we may not be close to finding a cure for HIV but AIDS isn’t the unstoppable killer it once was. Fife says that for many people, all it takes is one pill a day to manage the infection, and live a normal life.

I’m Jeremy Shere.

This Sound Medicine Checkup is underwritten by IUPUI, where impact is made…on our students, our community, our health and our economy. More information at www.iupui.edu.

Additional Resources:

• Also in Wired, find out about gene therapy that could immunize people against HIV.
• Read more about the new research at UCLA, testing gene therapy for AIDS resistance.
• Read about the new approach to HIV in Wired magazine.

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