IMMUNOBIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HIV TREATMENT

Recent information on the efficacy of anti-retroviral therapy and vaccination strategies has been disappointing as well as confusing. The recently announced Concorde study suggested that there is no advantage to early treatment of asymptomatic HIV infection with azidothymidine alone, even though the levels of CD4+ cells in the treated group were consistently higher than in the untreated group. This will lead to increasing attention being paid to the mechanisms whereby HIV causes AIDS, which have sadly been sidelined in the rush to produce classically based therapies and vaccines. Over the last year many different theories on how HIV kills CD4+ cells and leads to AIDS have been discussed and tentatively explored.