AIDS Virus Can Hide In Bone Marrow 118
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kdawson
from the no-one-can-see-us-here dept.
from the no-one-can-see-us-here dept.
suraj.sun writes "The virus that causes AIDS can hide in the bone marrow, avoiding drugs and later awakening to cause illness, according to new research that could point the way toward better treatments for the disease. Dr. Kathleen Collins of the University of Michigan and her colleagues report in this week's edition of the journal Nature Medicine that the HIV virus can infect long-lived bone marrow cells that eventually convert into blood cells. The virus is dormant in the bone marrow cells, she said, but when those progenitor cells develop into blood cells, it can be reactivated and cause renewed infection. The virus kills the new blood cells and then moves on to infect other cells, said. In recent years, drugs have reduced AIDS deaths sharply, but patients need to keep taking the medicines for life or the infection comes back, Dr. Collins said."
Re:Uh This is a Surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
you are implying that a virus competely changes your entire genetic make up. and this is simply not the case. it changes cellular dna to instructs those infected cells to mass produce new hiv. You wont be growing wings anytime soon.
Transposons [wikipedia.org] would like to disagree! These make up upto 50% of the human genome (only 2% are actual Genes)! They are essentially viruses trapped in your cell, they can still duplicate, but they lost their ability to leave the cell. Selfish Genes essentially. Luckily most of them are inactive by now.
It is believed that the us Eutheria, i.e. mammals with a placenta, gained the ability to have one common circulatory system for two different organisms by using viral DNA to keep the immune system from going nuts about this.
Re:Uh This is a Surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
So the only logical conclusion is that likely all cells are infected, but do not commonly produce viruses.
The only logical conclusion is the one that requires the biggest leap? Okay...
There are a number of possible conclusions, but I'd say the most logical one is the one that requires the fewest leaps and best fits the evidence.
The second part of the body after the blood that we find is infected is the bone marrow, which is responsible for producing blood, and is vastly more difficult to inspect that parts of the body that have so far shown no infection, like the skin. A logical conclusion would therefore be that HIV infects the blood and bone marrow which produces blood, and not other parts of the body which have not shown any infection despite being easier to investigate.
Another logical conclusion would be that since the infected bone marrow cells are dormant and inactive until they become blood cells, and only bone marrow cells become blood cells, that fighting the infection in the marrow (e.g. via a transplant though that's a big hammer) would be sufficient and any "infection" in the rest of the body would be irrelevant. Oh and hey there's some evidence that this actually works too.
You could of course be right and the entire body has its DNA re-written and that every cell in the body could potentially start creating new viruses. That's certainly not the only logical conclusion, nor do I think it's the most logical (since observation seems to go against it), but it's possible.
But ultimately the most logical conclusion that you or I can reach is that we should wait for the fine folks doing the research to continue to do their good work rather than assuming we've already got it all figured out. :P
Re:How about a bone marrow transplant? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Alt Therapies (Score:1, Interesting)
Unfortunately, it's well established that HIV isn't limited to the bone marrow. In addition to the active infection, which includes the blood, dormant reservoirs exist in other places--memory cells and some immune cells in the stomach, for example. This finding merely confirms yet one more reservoir.