> The 14 adults still have traces of HIV in their blood, but at such low levels that their body can naturally keep it in check without drugs.
For a transmissible infectious disease with a reservoir, cure means eradication. These people appear to have one of the following (just my guesses):
1) Early HAART led to selection pressure on HIV in such a way that, for some people, the HIV itself that became embedded in the latent reservoir is defective in some way. Therefore, the reservoir continues to produce HIV particles, but these are relatively ineffective at infecting additional cells.
2) They are supercontrollers via a previously undescribed mechanism (since they were stated not to be classical supercontrollers).
Again, this is complete speculation that would require sequencing and functional studies to investigate, HIV is not my field, etc.
> The 14 adults still have traces of HIV in their blood, but at such low levels that their body can naturally keep it in check without drugs.
For a transmissible infectious disease with a reservoir, cure means eradication. These people appear to have one of the following (just my guesses):
1) Early HAART led to selection pressure on HIV in such a way that, for some people, the HIV itself that became embedded in the latent reservoir is defective in some way. Therefore, the reservoir continues to produce HIV particles, but these are relatively ineffective at infecting additional cells.
2) They are supercontrollers via a previously undescribed mechanism (since they were stated not to be classical supercontrollers).
Again, this is complete speculation that would require sequencing and functional studies to investigate, HIV is not my field, etc.