happyhealthygal
"keep in mind that even if HIV were cured, the HIV antibodies will remain in the body for years and thus trigger positive tests"
I probably wasn't clear on this point before when I said that you'll continue having an antibody response for many years, and possibly life, following HIV infection, but I just thought you'd want to know that the antibodies themselves don't remain in the body for all that long. If you were to try to passively immunize someone with anti-HIV antibodies (which wouldn't work, by the way!), you'd be talking in terms of months, not years. HIV-negative infants who passively receive anti-HIV antibodies from their mothers test HIV-negative by 18 months (and often long before then). Antibodies are proteins, not cells, and they do not proliferate, so they cannot generate new antibodies to remain behind after they're eliminated.
What DOES stick around are the cells that make antibodies (B-cells), which DO proliferate. When you get an infection and your body mounts an antibody response to that pathogen, it does so because a B-cell specific to some piece of that pathogen is activated. Following activation, the B-cell rapidly proliferates, and some of its daughter cells become "memory B-cells" which are guardians for the future. Memory B-cells do die off, but they also divide, spawning new memory B-cells. So to quickly lose an antibody response, the rate of memory B-cell decay must REALLY exceed the rate of memory B-cell proliferation. The kinetics of memory B-cells are not fully understood, but needless to say, antibody responses are often quite persistent. With HIV, it would take a few years at a minimum (and probably much longer).
In less technical language: it's not that the bricks last forever, it's that the factories that make them just keep churning out more!
I know you see me as an anal-retentive annoyance, but given the incredible amount of time and effort you spend on your health-advising endeavors, I figure you're always a fan of new information. And if I start irritating you too much in your own forum, you can always take a page from "Dr" Charlie's book and just delete my posts!