Researchers have discovered that people with HIV have the ability to automatically kill HIV and prevent it from causing AIDS.
HIV researchers have long known that, in rare cases, patients can suppress the virus naturally without the need for medication. This phenomenon has attracted the attention of scientists for decades but has not yet been solved.
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| New research could aid in finding treatments for HIV-infected patients. (Source: Drugs.com) |
Recently, a study published in the journal Science Immunology identified at least one reason for this phenomenon.
Study author Dr. Bruce Walke, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, said that only about one in 300 people can control HIV without medication.
New research has identified an unusually potent version of white blood cells, called CD8+ T cells. Specifically, in humans, CD8+ T cells are a type of T cell (lymphocyte immune cell). In the immune system, CD8+ T cells play an important role in responding to pathogens such as virus-infected cells and cancer cells. In HIV-infected patients, CD8+ T cells often accumulate in the lymph nodes.
The researchers found that people with HIV have the ability to automatically kill HIV and prevent it from causing disease, these CD8+ T cells are much more "adept" at identifying and stopping it. HIV.
It seems that it is the CD8+ T-cell response that performs this control task, says Dr. Bruce Walker. To get a better understanding, the team analyzed blood and T-cell samples from seven healthy people without HIV infection, 7 HIV-infected patients with viral suppression, and 19 typical HIV patients with viral loads. controlled with antiretroviral therapy (ART).
Now, ART therapy has dramatically changed the status of HIV disease, suppressing the virus's activity and giving patients the chance to have a near-normal life expectancy. However, the therapy also causes certain side effects and has a high cost.
In HIV-infected patients who control the virus on their own, CD8+ T cells are "very abundant and highly functional," Walker said. In contrast, in HIV patients receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART), CD8+ T cells are less numerous and also less active.
The bottom line, he added, is that in patients who get the virus under control, these "improved" CD8+ T cells "are blocking HIV, not letting it do any harm."
Dr. Walker and team say they are looking to see how those T cells in HIV-infected people can generate a specific type of immunity to fight HIV.
That's a tough goal, says Dr. Michael Horberg, director of the Centers for HIV/AIDS and STDs at the Kaiser Institute for Care Management in Rockville. According to Dr. Horberg, in his nearly 35 years of clinical care for HIV patients, he has met very few patients with this ability.
However, according to some experts, this is an important area of research that can help find treatments for HIV-infected patients and expand the scope of treatment for current diseases or pandemics. Future.
