Day one:
After you've tested positive

May 2008     View PDF     En español

Immune therapies

Because the immune system is sometimes suppressed, overactive and misdirected by HIV, it makes sense to seek out medicines that might help correct some of these problems. The goal of using immune therapies is to increase the number or function of lost cells (such as CD4 cells) to restore the balance of the various parts of the immune system or to reduce the harmful activities caused by infected cells. This is easy to describe but difficult to do.

Many researchers feel that we don’t yet know enough about the immune system to try to regulate it. Some therapies do influence the immune system. And similar claims have been made about some natural products. There is great popular appeal to the notion that we should somehow “boost the immune system” to help the body naturally regulate itself against HIV.

For the most part, this is little more than an empty advertising slogan. There’s little evidence that anyone really knows how to do this. Moreover, the body’s natural defenses almost always seem to fail in the fight against HIV. It would be unrealistic to expect that this approach on its own would solve the problems of HIV.

At this point, there’s no clear or simple way to address the defects of the immune system in HIV infection. Some of the most complete information on immune therapies is available in Project Inform’s publications, Strategies for Improving Your Immune Health and Interleukin-2.