Nigerian Professor Discovers Cure To Hiv/Aids

Prof. Francis Otunta, the Vice Chancellor (VC), Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, in Abia, has confirmed the discovery of a new drug for the treatment and cure of HIV/AIDS.

Otunta said the finding followed years of scientific research by the institution. He said that the breakthrough was made by Prof. Maduike Ezeibe, a researcher in the university.

According to him, Ezeibe had presented the drug to the University management, Senate and Council, where he explained the processes he went through to arrive at his finding.

The VC also said that Ezeibe had equally presented the drug to his colleagues in the medical field and nobody had contradicted his finding. “Prof. Ezeibe is a researcher in Veterinary Medicine and one may wonder how he discovered a drug to cure a human ailment,” he said.

Otunta said that the university was in the process of mass producing the drug for further clinical trials on persons living with HIV/AIDS in the country.

Ezeibe, who is a professor of Veterinary Medicine and Clinical Virology, said that the drug was produced with Aluminum Silicate and Magnesium Silicate (Synthetic Aluminum-Magnesium Silicate).

He said the medicine could be a major foreign exchange earner for Nigeria, if approved by relevant authorities.

 Ezeibe said that he presented the research findings to the World Virology Conference in Atlanta in 2015, and Antonio (Texas) in 2016.

He said that he was also about to sign a memorandum of understanding with a U.S.-based Scientific Research Publishing, publishers of World Journal of AIDS, for the publication of his book “How I came about the cure for HIV/AIDS”.

Ezeibe, who said that the medicine was patented in August 2014 in Nigeria, called on the FG to help him to secure international patency for the drug.

 He said: “If commercialised, the Medicinal Synthetic Aluminum-Magnesium Silicate would become an alternative for petroleum to the Nigerian economy.”

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Resaerchers On HIV cure Are Making Remarkable Effort

HIV cure

Just as every one is hoping for a cure good institution, doctors and reseachers are putting effort towards looking for a cure to HIV.

Just like Malaria and other similar ailment, the fear of HIV is coming to an end… UK scientists and clinicians working on a groundbreaking trial to test a cure for the HIV infection say they have made remarkable progress after a test patient showed no sign of the virus following treatment.

The research, being carried out by five of Britain’s top universities with NHS support, is combining standard anti-retroviral drugs with a drug that reactivates dormant HIV and a vaccine that induces the immune system to destroy the infected cells.

Antiretoviral drugs alone are highly effective at stopping the virus from reproducing but do not eradicate the disease, so must be taken for life.

Fifty patients are taking part in the trial and early tests on the first person to complete the treatment show no signs of the virus in his blood, the Sunday Times reported.

There is still a long way to go before the treatment can be deemed a success as the virus has previously re-emerged in people thought to have been “cured” and the use of antiretroviral drugs means the researchers cannot be sure the HIV has gone. Nevertheless there is optimism over the findings.

Mark Samuels, the managing director of the National Institute for Health Research Office for Clinical Research Infra­structure, told the Sunday Times: “This is one of the first serious attempts at a full cure for HIV. We are exploring the real possibility of curing HIV. This is a huge challenge and it’s still early days but the progress has been remarkable.”

HIV is able to hide itself from the immune system in dormant cells where highly sophisticated modern testing cannot find it and therefore resist therapy. The treatment endeavours to trick the virus into emerging from its hiding places and then trigger the body’s immune system to recognise it and attack it, an approach that has been called “kick and kill”.

There are approximately 37 million people living with HIV worldwide and about 35 million people have died from the virus.

The difficulty of declaring a patient clear of HIV was illustrated by the case of a girl in Mississippi, who was put on a strong course of antiretroviral drugs within 30 hours of her birth in 2010 after her mother was found to be HIV positive.

Treatment continued until the hospital lost contact with the mother 18 months later. When mother and child reappeared five months later the baby had no detectable virus in her blood, raising hopes that early intervention had cured her, but two years the virus had re-emerged.

The only person believed to have been cured was Timothy Ray Brown, an American treated in Germany. He needed a bone marrow transplant to replace his own cancerous cells with stem cells that would remake his immune system and his doctor found him a donor who was naturally resistant to HIV infection due to a genetic mutation that blocks HIV from entering the cells in the human body.

However, stem cell transplants are difficult and potentially dangerous for the recipient and only undertaken where they can save a life.

Source: The Guardian

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