新型試驗療法獲進展 英國一名艾滋病患者疑似被完全治癒

A British man could become the first person in the world to be cured of HIV using a new therapy designed by a team of scientists from five UK universities.

通過使用由英國五所大學科學家團隊設計的最新療法，英國一名男子可能會成爲全球首個治癒患艾滋病的人。

The 44-year-old is one of 50 people currently trialling a treatment which targets the disease even in its dormant state.

這位44歲的男子是50位當前接受該療法的其中一位，其旨在消滅處於休眠期的病毒。

Scientists told The Sunday Times that presently the virus is completely undetectable in the man's blood and if it remains that way it will be the first complete cure.

科學家們向《星期日泰晤士報》透露，當前該男子的血液中完全檢測不到病毒了，如果一直這樣，那麼他將是首例完全治癒的病人。

"This is one of the first serious attempts at a full cure for HIV," said Mark Samuels, managing director of the National Institute for Health Research Office for Clinical Research Infrastructure.

英國國家臨牀研究基礎設施健康研究所負責人馬克·薩繆爾斯表示："這是一次嘗試完全治癒HIV的嚴肅試驗。"

"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."

"我們在探索治癒艾滋病的可能性，雖然現在還只處於研究的初期，但已經有了很好的進展。"

The trial is being undertaken by researchers from the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London, University College London and King's College London.

負責該試驗的研究人員來自牛津大學、劍橋大學、帝國理工學院、倫敦大學學院和倫敦國王學院。

HIV is so difficult to treat because it targets the immune system, splicing itself into the DNA of T-cells so that they not only ignore the disease, but turn into viral factories which reproduce the virus.

HIV很難治癒，因爲它以免疫系統爲攻擊對象，將自己與T細胞的DNA結合，這樣一來T細胞不僅會忽視這一疾病，還會轉化爲複製該病毒的病毒性工廠。

Current treatments, called anti-retroviral therapies (Art), which cannot spot dormant infected T-cells.

目前的主要治療方法是抗逆轉錄療法，但是它無法識別休眠的受感染的T細胞。

More than 100,000 people in Britain are living with HIV, around 17 per cent of whom do not know they have the disease, and 37 million are infected worldwide.

英國有超過10萬名HIV感染者，其中約17%不知道自己得了此病，而全球共計約有3700萬感染者。