Evaluating latent strategies for prevention and treatment of AIDS are apparently in for an improvement - with researchers having taken a giant stride in the direction of developing an enhanced animal model of human AIDS.

Till now, a major drawback in terms of research was a perfect tool to analyze the HIV infection, as researchers largely depended on findings from monkeys infected with SIV - simian immunodeficiency virus - which contains only about 50 percent of the genetic code of HIV.

However, now a research team, led by Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researcher Paul D. Bieniasz - of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center (ADARC) - has genetically-tailored a new HIV strain to infect a species of rhesus monkeys, which will bring about the monkeys to take off the initial stages of HIV infection in humans.

Elaborating the study of the new HIV strain, in the March 2 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bieniasz and his colleagues have established that three antiviral drugs, combined in one daily pill, could thwart HIV infection in the monkeys.

According to researchers, since "the lack of a primate model that utilizes HIV-1 has been an impediment to research," the new model can be considered "a real step forward" in terms of HIV research, as it will work in a way similar to the humans!