Why can we get HIV to a viral load of 0 but can’t get rid of the virus?

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Why can we get HIV to a viral load of 0 but can’t get rid of the virus?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Okay every answer so far is some degree of wrong, so here goes.

To put it simply, HIV writes its own genome into the host genome after it infects a cell. From then on, every time the cell copies its genome to divide, the viral genome gets copied along with it.

Currently we have no way of getting the viral genome out of the host genome. The best we can do is block the production of new infectious viruses.

Source: I’m in med school and we just had a lecture on HIV a few weeks ago.

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