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The answer for the decades old search for HIV virus elimination from an infected person's body may be lying in a cancer drug. 

The currently available medications do not completely decimate the virus. It hides in the body and waits to strike again. But researchers claim that they might have found out a way in which cancer drugs could make HIV virus more visible, and hence allowing them to be destroyed.

Although there is a long way to go before it is established that the drug will help patients get rid of the virus, the scientists are still optimistic. Even so, it is possible that the approach could be ruled out due to side effects of the medicine or some other medical hitch, reports Reuters.

"We just wanted to show that we could get the virus to come out and show itself," he said. "This doesn't tell you that we have a cure for AIDS that everyone can take tomorrow. It begins us on a road to accomplish that goal," study author Dr. David Margolis, a professor of medicine at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said according to the REUTERS report.

The current issue with eliminating HIV virus out of an infected person's body is the ability of the virus to "hijack" and reside in certain kinds of cells in the immune system which typically remember how to deal with different kinds of germs.  

That is precisely the reason why medications or the immune system cannot find and kill the virus or prevent it from growing. If the AIDS medication fails, the virus, which is already lying dormant in the body can activate itself again and attack the patient, thus making HIV currently incurable.

For the study, eight HIV-infected patients were injected with a dose of a skin cancer chemotherapy drug called vorinostat (Zolinza) by researchers and it was found that the drug made the virus more easily visible. 

The patients who were given a single dose did not report any side-effect although the drug for the cancer patients does come with serious side effects including dehydration, clots (rare), low red blood cell levels and high blood sugar.

For using the drugs for HIV virus, it needs to be determined as to what is the right amount of dosage and also, it is yet to be tested and established if the medications or the immune system itself would kill the virus once it is visible.    

"We don't know how to use this drug yet, and we don't know if we have to use it all the time every day for weeks or months and months," study author Margolis said. "We may just need to use it a few days here, and then rest, on and off, until we get to the goal we need to get to."

However, AIDS researcher Joseph Kulkosky, an associate professor of biology at Chestnut Hill College, in Philadelphia questioned whether it's possible to completely eliminate the 'reservoir' of hidden virus in the body. Even if complete elimination is not possible, it may be possible to get to some of it, he said.