Comment Re:Both Science and Nature? (Score 5, Interesting) 84
If you don't publish papers, you don't get funding. Sucks, but that's what we get for budget cut after budget cut, tax cut, after tax cut.
The big question appears to be if the latent infected cells can clear or deactivate HIV, or if they'll happily activate, travel to the site of an infection of some other kind, then start spewing HIV everywhere.
This process is basically cells realizing they are being infected (virus) or eaten (bacteria) by a foreign organism, and responding by killing themselves and spewing massive amounts of chemicals that alert the immune system to the problem. Normally, this recruits other immune cells to the site and is probably the right strategy 99% of the time. The problem is when the infected cells are immune cells themselves, their death just recruits more immune cells to an area with a higher chance of picking up HIV. What they found was that the body's stockpile of immune cells in the spleen, etc (normally dormant, awaiting an infection) get infected by HIV, but don't replicate the virus due to being inactive, however they are active enough to sense the virus in their DNA and kill themselves before repair mechanisms can remove or deactivate the virus genes.
The drug mentioned apparently shuts down or reduces this pathway, opening you up to a higher risk of bacterial infection but slowing or stopping the massive die-off of immune cells (assuming they are able to clean themselves up).