Comment by asveikau
6 months ago
I read that some other apes have the simian version of HIV (SIV) endemic in them and it doesn't kill them. Other apes don't typically have exposure and it gives them AIDS. This suggests that in the long term, a species can develop natural immunity.
IIRC there have always been these stories about HIV about these unusual cases where a rare set of humans actually beats the virus. (Googling, I found the term "elite controllers") The first time I remember reading of something like that was around 1996. It's always been discussed with cautious optimism as something needing more study. You could see TFA along these lines.
Yeah, I remember about some people being immune or at least have something that keeps them alive. This is true for a lot of viruses. Some people were resistant to the black death and most of us are their descendants, for example.
We can inject and train our body to produce antibodies, but the nature of HIV infection means (significantly) changing how our white blood cells are produced if they are going to be resistant, which is not trivial (and would likely mean actual DNA alterations with who knows what side effects). This is why an HIV vaccine is so difficult - it attacks and uses the body's immune system to spread.
The details are fuzzy, but I recall the avenue of those people's resistance/survivability being mostly a non-starter; the majority of them had a lot slower progression of the virus, not outright immunity.