Medical science has unlocked new traits of the virus that causes AIDS and allows new ways to create better future treatment that may lead to the much waited cure or vaccine. Here are the three key traits characterising resistance of HIV against the immune system.

The Invisibility Cloak

Harry Potter isn't the only one with the ability to become invisible; HIV itself has a 'cloak' which hides itself from defence soldiers of the immune system. HIV can sneak inside healthy cells without getting caught by guards and by making it detectable will allow immune cells to destroy it.

Professor Greg Towers of Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow at University College London revealed this unique HIV trait that infects healthy cells without alarming the immune system. He and his team are now developing a modified drug that will disarm HIV of its 'cloaking' shield to be labelled as 'foreign material' and trigger immune response.

Sugar Coating

HIV can coat itself against antibodies even if it triggers immune response and even morph to become drug-resistant. This trait makes HIV vaccine far from reach since the virus can keep up via mutation and adding sugar coating to block drugs.

Scientists from La Jolla and New York announced the decoded structure of a new key weapon against AIDS-causing virus, HIV. By understanding the defence mechanism used by HIV, more ways and methods can become available to overcome it.

John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College revealed that the virus' malleability is also fragile at the same time.

"It has to be somewhat unstable, because it's a machine that has to move and undergo conformational changes to allow the virus to fuse with host cells," John Moore explained, quoted by Union Tribune.

Igniting Fuse

Aside from hiding against immune cells and mutating to protect itself versus drugs, HIV can target "helper cells" to hide and wait for the right time of another attack inside the body. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science explained why current treatments against HIV cannot eradicate the virus even with all the suppression for years.

They discovered that HIV hides inside infected CD4 cells and wait for proper timing to strike again. CD4 cells are responsible for activating other immune or T-cell including the infamous "killer T-cell" which destroys any invading party.

"HIV inserts its DNA into the body and can sit in a resting phase for years before the T-cells are woken up to fight another disease. Once they wake up and replicate, they also produce HIV - and this happens time and time again in HIV patient," according to co-author Sarah Palmer of the Westmead Millenium Institute in Sydney, quoted by The Australian.

These important key traits of HIV explain why treatments today are painful for both the body and the pocket. Most people think that medical science can treat HIV but they don't realise that HIV treatments involve long-term drugs, chemotherapy and can also make patients sicker than before.