The body's immune response, developed to fight infections, makes HIV incurable - infected cells can become inactive and then, years after infection, start producing new virions. That's the conclusion reached by researchers at Duke University School of Medicine, whose paper was published in the journal Nature Microbiology. HIV has been shown to be incurable because of latently infected HIV T cells (immune cells) that are not affected by antiviral drugs or immune response. These cells can spontaneously emerge from their latent state and start producing HIV even years after infection. Because of this, people have to sit on therapy for a lifetime. The origin of these latently infected cells remains unknown, the scientists explained. The findings point to SMC5 and SMC6 proteins, which are involved in cell chromosome function and repair. HIV enters the body and infects CD4 and T cells of the immune system. The virus creates a DNA molecule that integrates into the human cell chromosome, where it then produces new viral particles. This allows HIV to affect more and more cells. The scientists found that in some infected cells, the SMC5 and SMC6 protein complex initiates a process that causes the DNA of the virus to go into a latent state. Because of this, neither drugs nor immunity can destroy them. As the scientists explained, the study shows that the latency is not due to any intrinsic properties of HIV, but rather to an unfortunate side effect of the cellular immune response, which probably evolved to "silence" the foreign DNA. The researchers found that a molecule that suppresses SMC5 and SMC6 has shown promising results as a potential remedy for HIV.