AIDS researchThe discovery by an NUI Maynooth researcher of a group of HIV survivors who have led healthy lives for up to 20 years without drugs may provide important information for drug and vaccine development.
Dr Grace McCormack, at the university's biology department, has identified a group of 16 HIV positive people who have survived for 16 to 20 years without any medical intervention and are still healthy.
She has described the discovery of this group, in a rural area of Malawi, as "very exciting".
Survival rates for HIV sufferers vary, according to Dr McCormack. "Some die relatively quickly, within two years. The majority live for up to eight to 10 years."
It is highly unusual, she said, for a group in the same area to live this long without any medical help.
Significantly, of this group of 16 survivors, 14 share the same genetic signature - one of the genes in the virus has a deletion (a piece of its DNA has been removed or lost).
This change in the virus happened independently in each of these people between the late 80s and 90s, Dr McCormack explained.
She is hoping to find out if there is something about the immune system of this group or something about the genetic make-up of the virus that has allowed them to live so long.
"They are somehow keeping the virus at bay and keeping the virus level very low. These people have been controlling the disease in their bodies for such a long time.
"Survivors like these people may be the key to discovering how we might prevent and control the disease," she stated.
Dr McCormack came upon this group while researching blood samples from Malawi, dating back from the early years of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.
Her research is into the spread of HIV-1 in the rural Karonga district of Malawi.
The majority of people in the region affected by AIDS are affected with HIV-1 Subtype C, which accounts for over 60 per cent of worldwide HIV-1 infection and 90 per cent of cases in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Her findings will be published later this year.
Dr McCormack, who graduated with her BSc and PhD from NUI Galway and previously worked in London, joined NUI Maynooth research and training staff three years ago.
Her previous research work includes the discovery of a new strain of the AIDS virus last year.
Speaking last week at Brigidine Secondary School, Mountrath, Co Laois, where she gave a lecture about the HIV epidemic in Malawi, Dr McCormack said the issues of government corruption, Third World debt and the position of women in African society needed to be addressed to tackle the problem of HIV.
"I hope that by the time you are my age there will be light at the end of the tunnel for HIV sufferers in Africa. I hope that people will have access to drugs and medical care and that the Western world will still not be turning its back on this epidemic."
Her talk last week was the first of a series of information talks which, she hopes, will raise awareness about the epidemic.