Everyone has AIDS! AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS!

[Queequeg]

Reading Fun Home, a really good graphic novel about a troubled family (obsessive closeted gay father, distant father, distant mother, tension from author's own lesbianism) growing up in the 60s-80s.  There's some discussion of the early AIDS epidemic-the author (and her father) were present in New York in 76, which she believed was the landing-point for the AIDS epidemic.

Couple of questions.
1) Isn't Robert Rayford generally considered to be AIDS Patient Zero?
2) Is there any indication that AIDS has become less lethal over past 40 years, apart from obvious drug treatments and improvements in behavior?  Reading, it looks like Rayford died really quickly and quite painfully.  I know there's a theory that something very similar happened with Syphilis. 

[garbon]

2) Is there any indication that AIDS has become less lethal over past 40 years, apart from obvious drug treatments and improvements in behavior?

How could you parse that out other than are you asking if people don't have it treated, are they less likely to die?

[Eddie Teach]

Magic: still alive.

[Queequeg]

2) Is there any indication that AIDS has become less lethal over past 40 years, apart from obvious drug treatments and improvements in behavior?

How could you parse that out other than are you asking if people don't have it treated, are they less likely to die?

More when they die. HIV will kill you, but the timeframe might have changed.

[Admiral Yi]

Squeelus, I suspect that's more a function of people back then having the disease for a while before it was diagnosed.

[merithyn]

2) Is there any indication that AIDS has become less lethal over past 40 years, apart from obvious drug treatments and improvements in behavior?  Reading, it looks like Rayford died really quickly and quite painfully.  I know there's a theory that something very similar happened with Syphilis.

Yes.

(CNN) -- It's a potential game changer in the fight against HIV, and doctors say it happened almost by accident.
A baby with the virus that causes AIDS was given high doses of three antiretroviral drugs within 30 hours of her birth. Doctors knew the mother was HIV positive and administered the drugs in hopes of controlling the virus.
Two years later, there is no evidence of HIV in the child's blood.
The Mississippi girl is the first child to be "functionally cured" of HIV, researchers announced Sunday. They said they believe early intervention with the antiretroviral drugs was key to the outcome.
A "functional cure" is when the presence of the virus is so small, lifelong treatment is not necessary and standard clinical tests cannot detect the virus in the blood.

[garbon]

2) Is there any indication that AIDS has become less lethal over past 40 years, apart from obvious drug treatments and improvements in behavior?  Reading, it looks like Rayford died really quickly and quite painfully.  I know there's a theory that something very similar happened with Syphilis.

Yes.

(CNN) -- It's a potential game changer in the fight against HIV, and doctors say it happened almost by accident.
A baby with the virus that causes AIDS was given high doses of three antiretroviral drugs within 30 hours of her birth. Doctors knew the mother was HIV positive and administered the drugs in hopes of controlling the virus.
Two years later, there is no evidence of HIV in the child's blood.
The Mississippi girl is the first child to be "functionally cured" of HIV, researchers announced Sunday. They said they believe early intervention with the antiretroviral drugs was key to the outcome.
A "functional cure" is when the presence of the virus is so small, lifelong treatment is not necessary and standard clinical tests cannot detect the virus in the blood.

But that's the odd part of his question. Certainly the idea is that drugs are game changers...he seemed to suggest a question though that strains of HIV leading to AIDS isn't as quick to lead to death now if not treated.

[Queequeg]

I don't think it's impossible. HIV patients who are vvisibly dying in a year aren't as likely to infect more people.

[jimmy olsen]

I don't think it's impossible. HIV patients who are vvisibly dying in a year aren't as likely to infect more people.

Most infectious diseases follow that pattern. Extremely virulent when they first appear, they become much less lethal over time because those strains that do have more success at passing on their genes.

[Sheilbh]

Squeelus, I suspect that's more a function of people back then having the disease for a while before it was diagnosed.

Yeah, I don't think it was until 86 that it could be easily diagnosed.

[dps]

Reading Fun Home, a really good graphic novel about a troubled family (obsessive closeted gay father, distant father, distant mother, tension from author's own lesbianism) growing up in the 60s-80s.  There's some discussion of the early AIDS epidemic-the author (and her father) were present in New York in 76, which she believed was the landing-point for the AIDS epidemic.

Couple of questions.
1) Isn't Robert Rayford generally considered to be AIDS Patient Zero?

He's considered the first person to die of AIDS in the US.  That isn't exactly the same thing as being Patient Zero.

2) Is there any indication that AIDS has become less lethal over past 40 years, apart from obvious drug treatments and improvements in behavior?  Reading, it looks like Rayford died really quickly and quite painfully.  I know there's a theory that something very similar happened with Syphilis. 

Keep in mind that AIDS generally doesn't kill you directly--it destroys your immune system, and you die of secondary infections.  Early AIDS patients were basically already dying of secondary infections by the time they were diagnosed as having AIDS.  Nowdays, a lot of people in high-risk groups get diagnosed as HIV-positive before they have any symptoms at all.

[jimmy olsen]

A possible cure.

http://io9.com/new-computer-designed-drug-prevents-aids-from-replica-1473572265/@georgedvorsky

New Computer-Designed 'Drug' Prevents AIDS From Replicating

European researchers have used a computer to design small synthetic molecules capable of attacking the deadly AIDS virus where it hurts the most: its ability to produce the genetic material required for replication. It's the first time in history this has ever been done.

To date, HIV/AIDS has killed more than 28 million people worldwide. While a new HIV vaccine shows promise, this is of little consolation to the 34 million people currently living with the virus. In an effort to treat ongoing infections, pharmaceutical companies typically focus on medicines that act on target proteins, but the HIV protein has long been considered one of the most difficult targets in all of structural biology, mostly on account of the wildly complex way its receptors are made from RNA.

Seeking a different angle, scientists from several Spanish universities and research centers took to their computers in hopes of designing a new synthetic chemical capable of joining — and then sabotaging — an RNA target.
Stopping AIDS's Rev

And this is precisely what they did. The novel designer molecules work by blocking the virus' ability to replicate. And they do so by inhibiting the output of genetic material from the infected cell nucleus to the cytoplasm. Without replication, no new infections can occur. So in theory, because all cells are mortal, even the infected cells will eventually wither away and die.

Normally, the replicative genetic material of the AIDS virus, or HIV-1, is formed by ribonucleic acid (RNA). This critical genetic material encodes for special proteins that allow it to penetrate human cells and then reproduce within them.

But the new designer compound, a virus inhibitor called terphenyls, reproduces the interactions of one of the proteins encoded by the virus — a viral protein called Rev. These terphenyls have the nasty habit of acting like an unwelcomed guest in the Rev's receptor within the viral RNA. And because three's a crowd, this prevents the proper interaction between the protein and its RNA receptor. The virus's replicative ability is broken — the proper interaction required for the virus's genetic material to leave the infected cell is prevented. And with no replication, no further infections of neighboring cells can occur.

From the Computer to the Lab

After designing the compound on the computer, the scientists synthesized the molecules in the lab. Then came the moment of truth: Testing the mixture on a real infected cell. And it worked, confirming the validity of the models generated by the computer.

The next step will be to improve the pharmacological properties of the new Rev inhibitors and work towards actual clinical applications. Encouragingly, the terphenyl structures identified in this research could open new ways to approach other therapeutic targets.

Read the entire study at Angewandte Chemie International Edition: "Structure-Based Design of an RNA-Binding p-Terphenylene Scaffold that Inhibits HIV-1 Rev Protein Function".

[Maximus]

CdM uses typewriter-designed drugs

[CountDeMoney]

Pica Font: Thrive.