Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
The Associated Press - Wednesday December 16, 1998
The discovery was first reported by The Associated Press last month when it was presented in Denver at the annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. It is now being published in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of medicine.
Researchers at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia said they discovered the HIV provirus - the genetic component of the AIDS virus - still in the semen cells of four of seven men whose blood levels of HIV had been reduced to undetectable levels.
In test-tube experiments, the scientists were able to grow the AIDS virus when they combined tiny provirus samples from the patients with blood from individuals who had never been infected.
The study suggests that HIV-positive men whose health has dramatically improved after taking the AIDS drug cocktail might still be able to transmit the virus to others.
The researchers described these provirus reservoirs as the "Trojan horse" of AIDS, and said they may lurk in the brain and retina cells, too. Determining how to eradicate these last traces is the "endgame" in the two-decade battle against AIDS, they said.
"In many patients, we've gone 90 yards and we're at the point where we just have to push the ball over the goal line," said Dr. Roger J. Pomerantz, director of the Center of Human Virology at Thomas Jefferson. "But those last 10 yards can be very hard."
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