Objective "zero" in the fight against AIDS

Zero deaths from AIDS, zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination for people living with AIDS: Getting to Zero , Getting to zero, is the slogan of World AIDS Day which is celebrated on December 1 in the world. An ambitious goal, but certainly not reached soon, and that he immediately raised the question? Where do we stand? According to estimates, in 2010, around the world, new infections have risen to 2.7 million deaths from AIDS and 1.8 million were still many, but these numbers are the lowest ever reached a peak of 'epidemic. The new infections were reduced by 21 percent since 1997, and more deaths by 21 percent since 2005.

MORE CARE - Even access to care has improved in developing countries: today 50 percent of the people, candidates for therapy, are treated with life-saving drugs. And the more care is early, the more it reduces the transmission of the virus through sexual contact. Prevention campaigns, diagnostic tests and anti-viral drugs (today there are at least thirty to personalize therapy) have done their part, but still not enough. The World wants to be a reference to the problem. It stimulates, at the national level, initiatives of various kinds. In Italy, the Ministry of Health organizes the AIDS Scratch Away (Shake off AIDS), a music festival to raise awareness among young people in prevention. The Lila, the Italian League for the fight against AIDS, launched its "AIDS. Protect yourself simply "to promote condom use. Cesvi, an Italian humanitarian organization, is celebrating ten years of its campaign to combat the disease in sub-Saharan Africa.

APP FOR-Nuke - The Nps Italy, the network of people living with HIV, HIV-Bookmark launches, the first application in the world for HIV, created in Italy and developed for the Android platform, iPhone, RIM (Blackberry OS) Symbian with nine features ( including the agenda for the management of therapy, the list of interactions between drugs, a database of the centers of infectious diseases). Asvi The Foundation presents the "Free 10 years to prevent maternal-fetal AIDS in Uganda." A number of proposals, therefore, that go in the direction of the "zero". Meanwhile the search continues to work. The more ambitious goal now is to find a real cure for the infection, which is able to heal and eliminate the virus from the body. Are two approaches: the "treatment sterilizing" and "functional cure".

THE PATIENT OF TRENTON - The first is based on gene therapy. After the patient's case in Berlin (one HIV positive patient who, after receiving a bone marrow transplant, he stopped taking anti-HIV drugs because the donor cells were "resistant" virus "), researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have tried to manipulate the white blood cells from an HIV positive person (known as the patient of Trenton) "silencing" the gene that produces the cellular receptor for the virus ((is the CCR5 receptor). Another group of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and University of North Carolina are, however, experiencing two drugs that can eradicate the virus from the body, going to flush him out from his refuge where he remained silent. vorinostat and drugs are an antibody capable of blocking a protein called PD-1: both prevent the virus from "falling asleep" inside cells.

SAVE WITH THE CIRCUMCISION - Last as regards the economic aspects of fundamental importance in the fight against AIDS. Male circumcision, which has proved an effective method to reduce HIV infections in African populations, if applied on a large scale could save billions of dollars in health care. According to a study published in the journal Plos, with an investment of $ 1.5 billion, between 2011 and 2015 to reach 80 percent coverage of circumcision in 14 priority countries in Africa and $ 500 million to 'years, between 2016 and 2025, to maintain coverage, you would, between 2011 and 2025, a savings of 16.5 billion dollars in terms of lower costs of care.