AIDS cure still demands a lot of research, says specialist

Scientific community, society, government and non-governmental organizations in emerging countries such as Brazil have a big role to play in international mobilization for the cure and eradication of HIV/AIDS.

Significant research advances have been made in search for a cure, especially regarding the study of HIV's persistence and latency in the body, the action of the immune system in this process of latency, and in the development of new antiretroviral therapeutic regimens that reverse latency. This was confirmed by Dr. Cristina Possas, coordinator of the postgraduate (Master's and PhD) programmes in Clinical Research in Infectious Diseases, the Clinical Research Institute Evandro Chagas/Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz). She says we now have scientific evidence, such as the "HIV controllers": patients whose immunological system spontaneously controls their infection. "This brings the prospect of a better understanding of the immune system and thus, treatment that can induce analog control in other infected patients", says the expert.

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Tropical Medicine faces new challenges

If Brazil does not reduce the economic and social inequalities of its population, it will not be able to overcome the problems caused by tropical diseases

The mission of the new tropical medicine is to prioritize tackling the health status of cities and their slums. This was one of the main points raised by Dr. Sinval Pinto Brandão Filho, a researcher at Fiocruz in Recife and the First Secretary of the Brazilian Society of Tropical Medicine (SBMT), at the 64th Meeting of the Brazilian Society for Progress in Science (SBPC), in São Luis/MA. In his speech, he warned about urban non-infectious tropical diseases, including the epidemic of injuries and deaths from motorcycle accidents.

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