Re: Oleander, HIV cure? want to know more please

"Have you heard about anyone actually getting a positive to negative test result?"

I assume you mean a negative result on one of the tests use to diagnose a person as HIV-positive. This is not something that any effective therapy is likely to do, and it is not even something you would really want it to do (from a health perspective, not a psychological one. There's currently a stigma to being HIV-positive, but I imagine that if an effective cure came along, much of that stigma would be lost).
HIV is, in the vast, VAST majority of incidences, diagnosed on the basis of antibody tests. When somebody is "HIV-positive" or "HIV-negative", that generally means that they tested positive or negative on a Western Blot. Let's say that a cure came along: all HIV virions and all HIV-infected cells are eliminated (thus far, no therapy has been shown to do this. Getting rid of HIV virions isn't all that difficult. The difficulty is getting rid of all of the cells that have already incorporated the virus into their DNA). So, you've been cured! Woo-hoo! You would still test HIV-positive. Why? Because antibody-based HIV tests are not looking for virions (RNA PCR does this) or infected cells (DNA PCR does this), they are looking for antibodies! Your body makes antibodies to a virus even after the infection itself is gone (when it comes to infectious disease, this is a good thing! If you have an effective antibody response to a given virus, you want to maintain it, so that you don't get sick the next time you're infected with that virus. An antibody response the second time you get sick with a virus is faster, better, and stronger than the first time around). How long would you continue to have anti-HIV antibodies that would result in a positive HIV test? The answer is that nobody really knows. However, for many viruses, it is a very long time (for instance, an antibody response to measles virus probably lasts a lifetime in most people). Viruses differ (as do people!) in their ability to create a long-lasting antibody response. We don't really know how long an antibody response to HIV would last after an established HIV infection was gone, because we don't have anyone who has been confirmed cured who you could track that in. However, it's probably a long, long time. This is suggested by several things. First, patients who are exposed to HIV but take post-exposure prophylaxis immediately after exposure to prevent the infection from establishing itself (and do not have HIV) nevertheless produce antibodies to HIV for at least 5 years (probably longer). Patients on HAART with no detectable viral load for many years don't show decreases in their antibody levels. Also, there was an HIV vaccine trial that showed antibody responses 10 years after an HIV envelope protein was given as a vaccine (vaccine-induced antibody responses are generally less long-lasting than those you would have following an actual infection).
Going from HIV-positive to HIV-negative is called "seroreverting". When this happens in someone who is HIV-infected, it is usually not a good thing! Patients with advanced AIDS with severely deficient immune systems sometimes lose the ability to produce antibodies. This is a very bad sign, because to fight off a whole lot of different infections, you need the ability to make antibodies!
I don't think it's reasonable to evaluate a therapy by whether it induces seroreversion, because you can be cured of so many things and yet continue making antibodies against them.


Out of respect for Tony, I won't comment on OPC Sutherlandia in his own forum. I've written on it before, so if I have time later, I'll try to comment in the HIV forum.