Wonders never cease. A study in the British medical journal The Lancet demonstrates the surprising ability of a new class of anti-HIV drugs to, in combination with other treatment, reduce the presence of the retrovirus and boost immunity in the study's trial patients. The drug is called raltegravir, an integrase inhibitor.

Backgrounder: integrase is one of three enzymes needed by HIV to replicate. Stop the integrase, negatively affect the ability of the insidious little bug to reproduce itself (which is what viruses do). Up until now, there has been no successful integrase inhibitor that could do the job, the news report in the online Sydney Morning Herald (via AFP) explains.

The study showed that, among 178 patients divided into four groups, in 65% of those taking various doses of raltegravir, the amount of HIV-genetic material "dropped below a measurable threshold... nearly five times as many as the placebo group." The study's authors are hopeful that, should the drug show no long-term side effects, and if HIV doesn't develop a resistance to the drug, raltegravir could play a major role in HIV treatment.