A Review of the Advances in the Mechanisms used to Mitigate/Reverse HIV Latency

Abstract

Once it enters the human body, HIV inserts its genetic material into the DNA of the host immune cells. Doing this enables HIV to force the cell's machinery to make many copies of the virus. Antiretroviral therapy (ART) for patients living with HIV has resulted in successful suppression of the AIDS virus (HIV) and this medication has turned what was once a death sentence into a chronically managed disease. However, while drug therapy allows people living with HIV to lead a relatively normal life, it is not a cure as this treatment is insufficient to clear persistent infection, it does not lead to the full eradication of infection and the virus continues to persist within a latent reservoir in resting memory CD4+ T cells and macrophages. HIV latency is due to some HIVinfected immune cells going into a dormant or latent state and not making new virus. Latent HIV reservoirs are established during the earliest stage of HIV infection and throughout the course of the disease. The virus can hide in this latent reservoir in infected cells for a long time, even for several decades, without their genetic code being read to make protein or without any viral protein being expressed, and thus without becoming active and causing any noticeable symptoms, thus eluding the immune system's response and antiviral treatments. These HIV latency sanctuaries are seen as a deliberate survival tactic by the virus, since in them the virus goes undetected by the immune system and is also beyond the reach of even the most potent antiretroviral drugs which do not penetrate well to reach the virus. Thus HIV latency makes it nearly impossible for the virus to be targeted with antiretroviral