According to a recent research at John’s Hopkins University, HIV treatments can now act in decreasing the virus’s ability to suppress the immune system.

In a recent interview, the team behind the research explained that HIV makes the cells of immune system to release excessive amount of interferons. Because of that, the system will be overwhelmed making it impossible for the body to fight viruses and bacteria.

But the Johns Hopkins University research team treated the HIV virus with a chemical. It removed the coating of cholesterol and was exposed to normal cells. Because of that, the immune system cells didn’t release any interferons, which is exactly the opposite of normal HIV reaction.

"The altered HIV doesn't overwhelm the system and instead triggers the innate immune response to kick in, like it does with any first virus encounter," says Dr. David Graham, one of the participants of the research at Johns Hopkins.

The researchers also exposed the cholesterol free HIV virus to HIV patient’s blood cells, and even to those people who were exposed to the virus but didn’t develop the disease. The altered virus reawakened the immune response in the HIV positive blood cells and stopped the virus in suppressing the immune system.

The number of HIV cases all over the world is continuously rising. And because of this, different research institutions are finding the best way to solve this problem. Experts are finding the best way to control this killer disease.

The continuous progress of HIV only shows that there are higher chances to find a cure for the disease. Aside from cure, experts are also working on finding ways to improve HIV diagnosis and prevention.

This recent research by Johns Hopkins team will surely help in preventing deaths of HIV patients caused by opportunistic diseases like pneumonia.

Statistics shows that 33.3 million people are living with HIV and AIDS in 2009. The cases rose in the past two years and new cases are continuously increasing. The heterosexual population is among the leading groups of people normally affected by the diseases.