2023-05-20 06:52:36
Precisely forty years ago, a small team from the Institut Pasteur put the pipette on the virus that was to mark an entire generation: HIV. This name will only be attributed to it in 1986, but on May 20, 1983, in their Parisian laboratory, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, Jean-Claude Chermann and Luc Montagnier are the first to isolate this virus which appeared two years earlier. The beginning of a relentless scientific fight against AIDS.
Forty years later, the epidemic is present on all continents, and if it is much better controlled, AIDS still kills. Where are the numbers? Has the search for a cure and a vaccine advanced? Are we still doing enough prevention? 20 Minutes takes stock with Bruno Spire, director of research at Inserm and honorary president of the Aides association.
Where is the epidemic in France and in the world?
The statistics are easy to remember: in forty years, AIDS has caused 40 million deaths worldwide. With a “deadly” virus and stammering research, “people would die in appalling conditions”, says Bruno Spire. Today, “the disease is under control”. Knowledge of the mode of transmission and treatment has largely evolved, allowing 38.4 million people to live with the disease in 2021, according to UNAIDS. In France, 5,013 people discovered their HIV status that same year, out of nearly 5.7 million medical laboratory tests, according to Public Health France. Half of these discovered cases concern heterosexual people.
Is the AIDS vaccine coming soon?
Research has made several leaps forward in the fight against AIDS. Regarding the treatment of the disease, after “heavy treatments with secondary” and triple therapy, there are today “more biomedical weapons”, underlines Bruno Spire. “It’s much simpler, there can be a single tablet to take a day, or an injection between the muscles every two months”, lists the doctor. He also cites “the Prep, which allows you to protect yourself even in relationships without condoms” if the drug is taken upstream.
But there remain, for the honorary president of Aides, two “major challenges” in research against AIDS: “the vaccine, and a treatment that cures completely”. The first is a sea serpent almost as old as AIDS itself, and “it will probably be very difficult to get it in the near future”, warns Bruno Spire. Unlike the virus linked to Covid-19, “which is cured in 99% of cases in nature”, impossible to “reproduce what we saw in nature” with HIV. In addition, the virus remains “extremely variable”. Current treatments do not completely eliminate the virus, but allow people to live longer with it. However, the health problems that come with aging are “worse for HIV-positive people”, notes the doctor.
Is prevention enough?
The AIDS virus and its mode of transmission are now generally known, and have permeated an entire generation. Nevertheless, “what is important is to work with the populations concerned”, wishes Bruno Spire, for whom prevention is not limited to information. The doctor highlights the work of associations in the field, which work to organize workshops so that people “are aware of what they are risking”. But the honorary president of Aides deplores “stagnant support”, even a “State which is withdrawing in certain regions”.
However, the issue of discussion, training and awareness around the question of AIDS is not only a matter of public health. “What hasn’t changed is the way society looks,” denounces the doctor. “HIV has become a chronic disease. But you can tell your neighbor that you have become diabetic, not that you are HIV positive”, he illustrates, regretting that there is “no treatment against discrimination”.
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