Health

2 Groups Of People Who Cannot Contact HIV&AIDS, Are You Among Them?

Published

4 years ago

December 12, 2020

The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) has been in existence for decades and neither cure nor vaccine has been discovered to date. Scientists across the world have made tremendous strides in developing specific drugs that help suppress the virus so that the patient can live longer.

If left untreated or poorly managed, HIV progresses into Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) that easily kills the patient since he/she will be more vulnerable to other diseases and the immune system weakened.

Despite HIV having neither cure nor vaccine, details have since emerged of people who cannot be infected with this deadly virus even if they have s3xual contact with an infected person or through any other means of transmission. Edujandon.com reports that there are actually a few people who cannot contract HIV due to some genetic differences.

For someone to contract HIV, the virus must bind to specific proteins (receptor) on the surfaces of the cells it infects, for it to be able to gain access into those cells, like a key fitting into a lock. CDC notes that there are two receptors for HIV virus; CCR5 and CXCR4. Research has since established that there are some people who are born with changes (mutation) to this receptor. For these people therefore, even if they got in contact with the virus through any of its means of transmission, the chance of contracting the disease is 100 times less likely than for someone with a normal receptor.

The daily notes that people living in the Northern Europe or those from that descent have largely been found to lack that receptor and therefore cannot contract HIV.

According to a previous research, two people were reported to have been cured of HIV after being given bone marrow transplants for cancer treatment from donors with this mutation, so the new bone marrow made blood cells that had a defective receptor and the HIV they had now had no cells to live in.