This article is the fourth in a four-part series that investigates current research toward finding a cure for HIV, including advances, promising treatment strategies, and barriers to reaching a cure. Part 1 discusses general types of HIV cures. Part 2 discusses specific strategies for targeting latent HIV. Part 3 discusses gene therapy and therapeutic vaccines. Part 4 discusses barriers to obtaining a cure.

Although researchers are getting closer to finding a cure for HIV and have a number of promising avenues to pursue, there are still a…

A recent study in Nature finds that simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a primate precursor to HIV, is not harmless as previously believed, but can lead to AIDS in chimpanzees and consequent fatality.

The study was conducted over a nine-year period on 94 chimpanzees in Gombe National Park, Tanzania, where Jane Goodall and her colleagues have studied chimpanzees for 50 years. The infected chimpanzees are from a population of the chimpanzee subspecies Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii.

Researchers found a 10-16 times higher death hazard for SIV-infected chimpanzees than the uninfected chimpanzees. They…