SIGHTINGS


 
Even If Treated Dormant
AIDS Virus Lurks in
T-Cells For Years
7-21-98

 
WASHINGTON (www.nandotimes.com) -- In as little as 10 days after symptoms start, the AIDS virus has established a stronghold in immune cells of the body that could last for years, waiting to erupt into disease, a new study shows.
 
Researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease say that a study of 10 patients shows that a latently infected pool of immune cells quickly established following infection by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Drug treatment apparently does not easily clear out the pool of infected cells, the experts said.
 
A report on the study will be published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
 
Even if the active HIV disease is held in check by a three-drug combination of antiviral drugs, the researchers say, the virus continues to lurk in resting CD4 T-cells in the blood. These are immune cells that detect and lead the attack on infections, but the CD4s are also the primary target of the HIV.
 
CD4 T-cells are usually resting. They are activated only when they detect some pathogen invader in the blood. When this happens, the cells attack the invader and prompt other immune cells to do the same.
 
Anthony S. Fauci, director of NIAID and co-author of the study, said that studies of the blood from the 10 HIV patients showed that their resting CD4 T-cells became infected as early as 10 days after their initial HIV infection symptoms appeared.
 
Earlier studies had shown that the resting CD4 T-cells continued to contain virus even when the antiviral drugs suppressed the virus elsewhere in the body.
 
The new study, said Fauci, shows that these reservoirs of virus are established very early in the infection.
 
Such reservoirs "present a formidable obstacle to the ultimate control and possible eradication of HIV from an infected person's body," said Tae-Wook Chun, a NIAID researcher and co-author of the study.


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