How HIV causes disease

How HIV causes disease features

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  Tales of the late diagnosed

  Gus Cairns talks to four people who were diagnosed with HIV only just in time to save their lives – and the daughter of one who wasn’t. ...

  From:  HIV treatment update

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  How does HIV make us sick?

  Nearly 30 years after the first documented cases of AIDS, we still don’t know exactly how HIV destroys the immune system. But inflammation – sustained immune activation...

  From:  HIV treatment update

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  Can we create ‘elite controllers’?

  Is combination immunotherapy the future? ask Edwin J Bernard and Derek Thaczuk ...

  From:  HIV treatment update

How HIV causes disease news from aidsmap

• French researchers report 14 patients in 'remission' after controlling HIV for over 4 years off treatment

  Two weeks ago, the announcement that a baby had been ‘functionally cured’ of HIV disease with the use of very early antiretroviral therapy (ART) caused great excitement at the start of the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2013). ...

  16 March 2013 | Gus Cairns

• Superinfection: second HIV infections happen as often as first ones

  Two studies of people with HIV in Rakai, Uganda and Mombasa, Kenya presented at the 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections show that the rate at which they acquired second, subsequent strains of HIV was about the same ...

  10 March 2012 | Gus Cairns

• Cell-to-cell spread of HIV keeps viral reservoir going despite ART

  The presence of very low levels of HIV in the blood despite treatment with highly potent antiretroviral regimens could be explained by cell-to-cell spread of the virus that overwhelms drug concentrations within cells, according to new research from the ...

  17 August 2011 | Keith Alcorn

• Treatment with statins reduces mortality risk for patients taking effective HIV therapy

  Treatment with statins significantly reduces the risk of death for patients taking virologically suppressive antiretroviral therapy, US investigators report in the online journal PLoS One. The investigators believe that statins were beneficial because of their anti-inflammatory effects. The observational study included ...

  15 August 2011 | Michael Carter

• HIV damages B-cells as well as T-cells: new treatment targets identified

  The signature effect of HIV infection, and the cause of AIDS, is disruption of the T-lymphocyte branch of the immune system and in particular the destruction of CD4+ T-helper cells. A team of researchers at the US National Institute ...

  10 June 2011 | Gus Cairns

• Gold-based drug shows promise in clearing HIV reservoir in monkey study

  A gold-based drug already used for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis significantly reduced the reservoir of viral DNA and the population of long-lived HIV-infected memory CD4+ cells in a study conducted in six monkeys, Italian and American researchers report in the ...

  20 April 2011 | Keith Alcorn

• Rapid ageing of T-cells after HIV infection could help explain cancers, diseases of ageing

  HIV infection can cause a specific sub-group of CD4 T-cells to age by as much as 20 or 30 years within three years of contracting the virus, American researchers report. This ageing process could help to explain the unusual ...

  27 January 2011 | Keith Alcorn

• Accelerated ageing of the immune system linked to heart disease risk in women with HIV

  Accelerated ageing of the immune system, caused by chronic HIV infection, was strongly associated with harmful changes in the carotid artery that may lead to long-term cardiovascular disease in women with HIV, US researchers report in an article published ...

  17 January 2011 | Keith Alcorn

• Immune restoration in DART study: late start means low CD4 count for years

  HIV-infected adults participating in the DART trial in Uganda and Zimbabwe who began antiretroviral treatment with CD4 counts below 125 cells/mm³ were very unlikely to see a restoration of immune function to a level of 250 ...

  19 February 2010 | Carole Leach-Lemens

• New antibodies identified that neutralise wide range of HIV types

  Scientists have identified two new antibodies that appear to neutralise a wide range of HIV types, blocking their potential for infection. The findings, published today in the journal Science, could open up a new avenue for ...

  03 September 2009 | Keith Alcorn

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How HIV causes disease news selected from other sources

• Groundbreaking Research Discovers Possible New Way To Fight HIV

  New research has disocvered how the HIV virus targets memory T-cells or "veterans" instead of naive "virgin" T-cells. This could potentially change how drugs are used to halt the virus. This research finds that HIV exploits the fact that memory T-cells are more mobile; it uses the cytoskeleton, the internal structure of the cell, as a "conveyor belt" to carry it deep within the cell and to the nucleus. The researchers are now looking at whether drugs that reduce cancer cell motility could reduce the "attractiveness" of T-memory cells to HIV.

  25 October 2012 | Medical News Today

• Virus throws a wrench in the immune system

  The cytomegalovirus (CMV) is a member of the herpesvirus family. Although most people carry CMV for life, it hardly ever makes them sick. Researchers from the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research and from the USA have now unveiled long term consequences of the on-going presence of CMV: Later in life, more and more cells of the immune system concentrate on CMV, and as a result, the response against other viruses is weakened. These research results help to explain why the elderly are often more prone to infectious diseases than young people. The viral immunologist Professor Luka Cicin-Sain, head of the junior research group "Immune Aging and Chronic Infections" at the HZI in Braunschweig, Germany, and his colleagues have now published their discovery in the open access journal PLoS Pathogens. In the article, they describe that even months after infection with CMV, mice still show weaker responses against other viruses such as the flu virus.

  17 August 2012 | EurekAlert

• UCSF researchers identify a potential new HIV vaccine/therapy target

  After being infected with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) in a laboratory study, rhesus macaques that had more of a certain type of immune cell in their gut than others had much lower levels of the virus in their blood, and for six months after infection were better able to control the virus.

  31 May 2012 | Eurekalert Medicine & Health

• Researchers discover new HIV-suppressing protein

  Scientists have identified a new HIV-suppressing protein in the blood of people infected with the virus. In laboratory studies, the protein, called CXCL4 or PF-4, binds to HIV such that it cannot attach to or enter a human cell.

  30 May 2012 | News-Medical.net

• Mechanism of HIV spread has potential for future drug therapy

  A new understanding of the initial interactions of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) and dendritic cells is described by Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researchers in a study currently featured in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

  24 April 2012 | Google Alerts HIV

• Immune cells use 'starvation tactics' on HIV

  Scientists have shown how some cells in the body can repel attacks from HIV by starving the virus of the building blocks of life. Viruses cannot replicate on their own; they must hijack other other cells and turn them into virus production factories.

  12 February 2012 | BBC News

• Immediate ART during Early HIV Infection May Delay Disease Progression

  People who started combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) within 6 months of HIV infection were less likely to experience large CD4 cell decreases or AIDS-related illnesses during follow-up, although viral load set point could not be evaluated, researchers reported.

  19 December 2011 | HIVandHepatitis.com

• Aethlon Medical Announces HIV-AIDS Research Discovery

  Aethlon Medical, the pioneer in developing therapeutic filtration devices to address infectious disease and cancer, announced today that researchers have discovered that the Aethlon Hemopurifier® is able to capture particles known as Nef protein exosomes, which contribute to the progression of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).

  15 December 2011 | PR Newswire (press release)

• 'Pep talk' can revive immune cells exhausted by chronic viral infection

  Chronic infections by viruses such as HIV or hepatitis C eventually take hold because they wear the immune system out, a phenomenon immunologists describe as exhaustion. Yet exhausted immune cells can be revived after the introduction of fresh cells that act like coaches giving a pep talk, researchers at Emory Vaccine Center have found.

  13 December 2011 | Eurekalert Medicine & Health

• Online gamers crack AIDS enzyme puzzle

  Online gamers have achieved a feat beyond the realm of Second Life or Dungeons and Dragons: they have deciphered the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus that had thwarted scientists for a decade.

  18 September 2011 | AFP

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