Washington, D.C. ? The AIDS virus has hideouts deep in the immune system that today’s drugs can’t reach. Now scientists finally have discovered how HIV builds one of those fortresses – and they’re exploring whether a drug already used to fight a parasite in developing countries just might hold a key to break in.

But University of Rochester scientists say it may be fairly straightforward to attack one of these reservoirs, blood cells called macrophages that HIV hijacks and turns into viral hideaways.

The new discovery shows the exact steps that HIV takes to do that – and found that some existing drugs can block the main step and thus cause these cells to self-destruct.

Today’s drugs have turned HIV from a quick death sentence into, for many, a chronic infection. Yet those drugs don’t eliminate HIV because they can’t reach the two known pools of cells where the virus can lie dormant, ever ready to resurface.

So-called memory T cells form one such pool. They live for years, even decades, making them a logical HIV hideout.

Macrophages, another type of immune cell, form the second pool. They roam the body looking for invaders like bacteria to gobble up. If they get harmed, such as becoming infected by a virus, they’re supposed to commit suicide. But HIV instead keeps them alive long past their normal lifespan.