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Scientists invent search-and-destroy method to flush HIV out of hiding places.
2003 OCT 8 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- University of California Los Angeles AIDS Institute scientists have devised a new technique to switch on and drive hibernating HIV from its hiding places in the body.
Reported in Immunity, the research suggests a possible therapeutic strategy to kill the hidden virus so people who are HIV-positive could eventually stop taking antiretroviral medications.
"Our findings show potential for flushing HIV out of its hiding places in the body," said Dr. Jerome Zack, principal investigator and associate director of basic sciences for the UCLA AIDS Institute. "If our method proves successful, it may enable HIV-infected individuals to discontinue costly and complex antiretroviral therapy, which can cause serious side effects."
"Immune cells can't kill HIV if they can't detect it," added Dr. David Brooks, a postdoctoral fellow and lead author of the study. "By switching on an HIV-positive person's dormant virus, we hope to enable the immune system to recognize and eradicate HIV-infected cells before they spread more virus."
Antiretroviral drugs kill HIV, often depleting the virus to undetectable levels in the blood of people taking the medications. This treatment alone, however, cannot completely eliminate HIV infection from the body.
Latent, or hibernating, HIV still hides in resting T-cells, which quietly lie in wait for a foreign particle to invade the immune system. When a foreign invasion occurs, the event activates some of the T-cells, which promptly begin manufacturing virus. And when an HIV-infected person discontinues antiretroviral drugs, this small reservoir of latently infected T-cells can rekindle the spread of HIV infection throughout the body.
"About one in a million T-cells holds latent HIV that the antiretroviral drugs can't touch," said Zack, a professor of medicine and vice chair of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "Our challenge was to make latent HIV vulnerable to treatment without harming healthy cells."
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