AIDS Virus Can Hide In Bone Marrow 118
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."
How about a bone marrow transplant? (Score:2)
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Wouldn't it full of mature immune system cells known to harbor HIV anyway?
I think it's interesting that the cells themselves can hide in the progenitor cells, that's clever, but I wouldn't think transplants would be done from HIV carriers to healthy individuals even if the HIV blood levels were reduced to undetectable levels by medicines -and- the cells of the tissue themselves weren't known to carry the virus because the blood always could. I know similar precautions are taken with blood donations and can
Re:How about a bone marrow transplant? (Score:5, Informative)
I think it's interesting that the cells themselves can hide in the progenitor cell
We're discussing the aids virus, not a cell infected with it. virus != cell.
The issue here is that some (all?) bone marrow stem cells don't progress with the reproduction of the virus while it's a stem cell. Once the stem cell is infected, the virus sits there, dormant, because the cell is not hospitable for it to reproduce in. Then when the stem cell differentiates into a red blood cell, the virus is able to resume its mission, and kicks out a few thousand new virons which re-initiate infection. This someone that was thought to be "cured" becomes reinfected.
Nerve cells have also been known to serve as time capsules for a variety of viruses, though I don't believe they've figured out what triggers reactivation in those cases. These sleepers are really challenging for the immune system to deal with, because from the outside of the cell where the white blood cells etc are milling around, the infected cell looks and behaves normally. It's only detected as a problem after it's fired up the bug factory inside, and by that time it may be too late. Unless the cell behaves abnormally, there's just no way for the immune system to identify the cell as needing to be destroyed. And from there the only thing that can kill it is itself. But again the apoptosis process is usually triggered by abnormalities within the cell - if the virus is dormant there's nothing to trigger that either. The cell doesn't know it's a carrier, nor does the immune system.
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Not that there even is an aids virus. I thought it was HIV.
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Not that there even is an aids virus. I thought it was HIV
AIDS was originally the description of the condition/symptoms of the disease that was later identified as HIV. The terms are now used somewhat interchangeably. (tho admittedly, this is probably poor usage, but at some point you just have to accept it)
Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome. Basically, something you caught from someone else crippled your immune system. Took them awhile to figure out what it was and actually isolate and classify it. T
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What do you want, a decree from God or something? We have some pretty large mountains of scientific evidence.
old AIDS and new AIDS (Score:1, Insightful)
AIDS has been redefined. The definition now requires the presence of HIV.
IMHO, that's cheating. It's "winning" the argument by changing the definition.
There are plenty of ways that one can aquire an immunodeficiency syndrome. They were all AIDS until some wiseass redefined AIDS to exclude everything except the most common situation.
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There are plenty of ways that one can aquire an immunodeficiency syndrome. They were all AIDS until some wiseass redefined AIDS to exclude everything except the most common situation.
Cite?
The other immunodeficiency disorders out there appear to be caused by congenital defects, chemotherapy, and so on. AIDS was the moniker given to the transmittable immunodeficiency disorder that was observed spreading in the early 1980s. It's since been pretty conclusively linked with HIV.
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So, in a way, AIDS is a rootkit infection.
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almost any virus can be considered a rootkit. They hijack cells and get them to infect others, just like an internet worm. Their level of sophistication varies though, which determines the level of danger they represent. The big problem is that evolution occurs at a staggering speed when such short "life cycles" combine with such a high reproduction grade. (one viron infecting one cell can release tens of thousands of virons when the cell finally bursts) Nothing can beat virii for adaptation speed because
AIDS attacks the brain too (Score:1, Flamebait)
AIDS dementia will kill you if you somehow survive without much of your immune system.
The really horrible thing is that the early stages of AIDS's attack on the brain cause risk-taking behavior and desire for sex.
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The really horrible thing is that the early stages of AIDS's attack on the brain cause risk-taking behavior and desire for sex.
Citation please? That sounds about as plausible as AIDS being an engineered bioweapon to be used against gays and blacks.
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The Queen song "I'm Going Slightly Mad" was all about Freddie Mercury's AIDS-induced dementia:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNBWf54RvsI [youtube.com]
At the time, fans thought it was simply humorous, as Freddie Mercury didn't announce his AIDS infection until the day before he died.
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We're discussing the aids virus, not a cell infected with it. virus != cell.
Er, that's embarrassing, I initially wrote "the progenitor cells could carry the virus," then instead meant to type "virus could hide in the progenitor cells." Ugh.
bullshet, I call Shanagans (Score:1)
Sorry but you're wrong (Score:3, Funny)
They never made any sequels to Highlander.
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so the obvious avenue for attack here (Score:1)
These sleepers are really challenging for the immune system to deal with, because from the outside of the cell where the white blood cells etc are milling around, the infected cell looks and behaves normally. It's only detected as a problem after it's fired up the bug factory inside, and by that time it may be too late. Unless the cell behaves abnormally, there's just no way for the immune system to identify the cell as needing to be destroyed. And from there the only thing that can kill it is itself. But again the apoptosis process is usually triggered by abnormalities within the cell - if the virus is dormant there's nothing to trigger that either. The cell doesn't know it's a carrier, nor does the immune system.
what this suggests then, is that the obvious avenue for attack is a way to trigger cell death whenever the aids virus is present in the cell, wonder if theres some way to give the cell sensitivity in this respect with minimal side effects. isnt this similar to some cancer treatment?
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what this suggests then, is that the obvious avenue for attack is a way to trigger cell death whenever the aids virus is present in the cell, wonder if theres some way to give the cell sensitivity in this respect with minimal side effects. isnt this similar to some cancer treatment?
Apoptosis [wikipedia.org] is the mechanism by which a cell destroys itself. (its "self destruct" mechanism) All larger lifeform cells have it. It's got two basic triggers: (1) when the cell has served its function and needs to go away, such as
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Anyway, back on the point: I don't think they'd transplant any tissue from an HIV carrier to a healthy person even without the current finding.
Wha?
The OP was talking about killing off the bone marrow in the *infected* patient and then performing a marrow transplant (a common treatment for lymphomas). No idea how you interpreted it as the reverse, what good would that do??
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Oh I don't know...
Improve Phizer's and GSK's margins?
Yeah, yeah, but you did ask what good it would do. That's all I could think up.
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The WSJ had an article [wsj.com] about this. From the article:
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That is a pore excuse.
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yes, and it works (Score:3, Informative)
We use chemicals, not radiation. The disease is called leukemia; it is cancer of the immune system.
AIDS has been cured this way. The patient already had leukemia. They got the AIDS cure thrown in for free. :-)
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My sister had cancer of the bone marrow, and that is pretty much exactly what they did.
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How about blocking the trigger that causes the virus to reactivate? (Provided we can figure it out)
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A full body scanner that is designed to scan for the HIV virus particles. As the scanner scans lasers are fired at the virus particles that don't damage the surrounding tissue but destroy disable the virus.
Of course a person would be on anti-virals for weeks before hand to remove as much virus particles as possible, the scanner is used to find what is left behind or hiding.
Or a nano bots that are injected into the body and do nothing but search and destroy for the virus. Once the nano bo
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What feature of the virus particles are you going to detect that distinguishes them from other organic matter? If it's radiation (either absorbtion or emission, or even fluorescence) ... what wavelengths? If it's particles, which particles?
What sort of false-positive and false-negative rates would you con
Alt Therapies (Score:5, Informative)
IIRC, they did a bone marrow transplant between someone with AIDS/HIV and another person who had a natural immunity to the disease.
The HIV positive patient was 'cured'
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1858843,00.html [time.com]
Is this a viable cure for HIV? Not by a long shot. Even [Berlin-based hematologist Gero] Huetter says bone-marrow transplants, which kill about a third of patients, are so dangerous that "they can't be justified ethically" in anything other than desperate situations like late-stage leukemia.
...
But there might be a glimmer of hope in the case. If the transplant does prove to have been a success and can be replicated, researchers say gene therapists might one day be able to re-engineer a patient's cells to change their bone marrow the same way a transplant does, except without the dangers.
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It would be extremely interesting if the actual source of the invincibility AIDS were to be bone marrow rather than blood itself. Perhaps we have gotten it wrong for the last 30 years or so. What a fantastic world it would be with yet another disease conquered.
The article doesn't do a very good job of putting this finding in context. The idea of "reservoirs" of the virus is both fairly old and well established; reasonably soon after HAART treatments were able to knock down the blood virus counts to undetectable levels, researchers tried the risky experiment of stopping treatment only to see the virus instantly rebounds.
Dormant cells in the lymph nodes are currently considered the most important such reservoir. Various other reservoirs were known or hypothesized
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The marrow transplant is older news. The issue is with the survivability of the procedure. These transplants kill about a third of the patients. It's not an attractive option. On top of that, finding a compatible donor is even more unlikely. It's just not a viable solution with current technology.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1858843,00.html [time.com]
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See: CCR5 Delta 32 [wikipedia.org] and how it relates to a BMT [wikipedia.org]
Additionally, if the HIV is limited to the bone marrow, theoretically, a complete myeloablative transplant should eradicate it, regardless of whether or not the donor possesses the CCR5/32 mutation, no?
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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.
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Even [Berlin-based hematologist Gero] Huetter says bone-marrow transplants, which kill about a third of patients, are so dangerous that "they can't be justified ethically" in anything other than desperate situations like late-stage leukemia.
Yeah, I had a dear family friend who was almost at that stage and the best marrow donor found at that point gave him something like a -- geeze it was years ago but I wanna say -- 20% chance of survival? If he'd gone into the acute stage they would have pulled the lever,
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Depends on how risky you consider anesthesia. That's about the riskiest aspect of donating marrow, followed closely by the risk of local infection.... As for the process, they basically stick a needle into your pelvic bone and draw out some marrow.
http://www.marrow.org/DONOR/When_You_re_Asked_to_Donate_fo/Donation_FAQs/index.html#process [marrow.org]
Humm (Score:1)
Similar to Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia then. Interesting.
Uh This is a Surprise? (Score:2)
HIV is a retrovirus. It literally becomes a part of your DNA. The only way to truly cure HIV is to remove the HIV DNA from your genome, good luck with that.
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$genome = str_replace($retroVirus, $superPower, $genome);
Just make sure you get the values in your variables correct, and that your body is upgraded to PHP v4.1 or later
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Also note the following is VeryBad(tm) mKay?
$genome = str_replace($retroVirus, $superPower, gnome);
Aside from the bareword that should have been found with Lint, that missing 'e' makes a *world* of difference.
-nB
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Maybe this is the next stage: "My DNA is full of gnomes."
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Re:Uh This is a Surprise? (Score:5, Informative)
-10 internet points. It becomes part of the dna for a few select cell types, not EVERY cell type, and certainly you cannot spread this 'bad' DNA to offspring by means of DNA in eggs/sperm. 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.
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Who said anything about wings?
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.
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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.
Huh? In what way do mammals have one common circulatory system for two different organisms? The only possibility I think you might be thinking of is mother and fetus, but the mother's blood and the fetal blood do not mix. There is material exchange at the placental barrier, but the blood supplies and circulatory systems are discrete.
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Re:Uh This is a Surprise? (Score:4, Informative)
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Having multicolored kernels is a trait, not a disease or infection.
But you're ignoring the amazing capacity for people who know nothing about biology to abuse biological concepts to the point where they are meaningless. I've seen people argue that babies are "parasitic" on the mother, for example, which is wrong on so many levels and speaks to such a profound ignorance of where concepts like "parasite" come from in the first place that one hardly knows where to start.
The basic mistake that people like this make is reifying some concept and treating instances of it as "rea
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All that you said is true, except that you said it in reply to a different post or imaginary post:
"It becomes part of the dna for a few select cell types, not EVERY cell type"
GP did not claim anything about EVERY DNA, or EVERY cell type.
"and certainly you cannot spread this 'bad' DNA to offspring by means of DNA in eggs/sperm"
GP did not say that at all and there is not even a hing of implication in his post.
"you are implying that a virus completely changes your entire genetic make up. and this is simply not
Re:Uh This is a Surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
HIV is a retrovirus. It literally becomes a part of your DNA. The only way to truly cure HIV is to remove the HIV DNA from your genome, good luck with that.
Sarcasm isn't warranted. Remember that each cell carries -it's own copy- of the genome. HIV does not infect every cell in your body. Kill off the infected cells and you've gotten rid of all the HIV DNA. Kill off the mature immune system cells and you'll still have this reservoir of stem cells which apperantly produce more virus. Kill off the fraction of bone marrow cells (ideally without killing the patient) and you'll have gotten rid of the HIV DNA.
Your brain cells, for example, don't appear to be infected and their copies of the genome will not have any HIV DNA in them. So it's not nearly as impossible as you've suggested.
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On the contrary, sarcasm is entirely warranted. The position that you take requires certainty that cells which are not continually actively producing HIV viruses have not been infected. This study shows that we have no idea which parts of the body are infected and which are not. So the only logical conclusion is that likely all cells are infected, but do not commonly produce viruses.
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This study shows that we have no idea which parts of the body are infected and which are not. So the only logical conclusion is that likely all cells are infected, but do not commonly produce viruses.
It always amazes me that people such as yourself make such wild eyed speculation based on one article written by some random AP reporter. Where you got the idea that "we have no idea which part of the body are infected and which are not" I can't fathom. Do you not realize that not knowing everything isn't the
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The thing you call a logical conclusion isn't.
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
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Fair enough but the point of this article is that you have to kill the bone marrow to kill HIV. My Father in law died of 5FE toxicity last year. The drug killed his bone marrow and from that point on his immune system started to collapse. Before long he was being eaten alive by bacteria. He started to decompose long before he died.
I don't think we have any good ways to safely reboot the bone marrow with new cells. If we could do that a lot of problems would go away.
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A second possibility is that you extract bone marrow stem cells, determine which cells aren't infected (as I'd expect odds are good that not all of them would be), culture those stem cells in a lab, then simultaneously kill off all the T cells and the bone marrow, then reintroduce the healthy stem cells in large quantities (possibly even getting some of those stem cells to differentiate into T cells in the test tube, too).
The big question in my mind is whether there's a way to determine which bone marrow st
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The megalomaniac idea would be gene therapy: Inserting another retrovirus with a second strand of DNA into the cell which then fabricates interfering RNA, i.e. RNA which intercepts the other virus' DNA. And that gene can only be activated via some external promoter. And then add a method for apoptosis (cell suicide) that triggers upon binding RNAi (if not all cells are infected).
I'm not making any bets how long it will be before this can become reality. Also, I smell Digital Life Management opportunities!
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I sseem to have heard this before somewhere [imdb.com]
Tyrell: [Tyrell explains to Roy why he can't extend his lifespan] The facts of life... to make an alteration in the evolvement of an organic life system is fatal. A coding sequence cannot be revised once it's been established.
Batty: Why not?
Tyrell: Because by the second day of incubation, any cells that have undergone reversion mutation give rise to revertant colonies, like rats leaving a sinking ship; then the ship... sinks.
Batty: What about EMS-3 recombination?
Tyrell: We've already tried it - ethyl, methane, sulfinate as an alkylating agent and potent mutagen; it created a virus so lethal the subject was dead before it even left the table.
Batty: Then a repressor protein, that would block the operating cells.
Tyrell: Wouldn't obstruct replication; but it does give rise to an error in replication, so that the newly formed DNA strand carries with it a mutation - and you've got a virus again... but this, all of this is academic. You were made as well as we could make you.
Batty: But not to last.
Tyrell: The light that burns twice as bright burns for half as long - and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy. Look at you: you're the Prodigal Son; you're quite a prize!
Batty: I've done... questionable things.
Tyrell: Also extraordinary things; revel in your time.
Batty: Nothing the God of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.
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It's really too bad Victor Frankenstein is dead.
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Honest Q (Score:2)
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Yeah, we can run with that.
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Linezolid works in most cases on these infections, as well as VRE cases. However there is 0.5% instance (recorded since ~1999) that even this fully synthetic AB is being resisted.
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light humor, ok folks
VERY light. Here's some light humor --
How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
None, that's a hardware problem
How many blondes does it take to change a lightbulb?
None, she'll get a man to change it for her.
How many engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
None, that's a technician's problem.
How many Irishmen does it take to change a light bulb?
Three, one to hold the bulb and two to drink until the room spins.
How many psychaitrists does it take to change a light bulb
What's all this biology? (Score:4, Funny)
Gosh, doesn't the submitter realize that Slashdotters are computer geeks and not biology geeks? Use analogies we can understand, like comparing this "hiding" virus to a rootkit or something.
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Read the masthead: Not "news for computer geeks, staff that mutters" but News for NERDS, stuff that matters. Yes, nerds mess with computers and quite a few if not most of us build our own, but nearly all scientists are nerds whether they're astronomers, physicists, or biologists. Isaac Asimov, who if you've not read you're not a nerd, was a biochemist who did research and taught at Boston University. Asimov was a nerd's nerd and wrote over 500 books, both fiction and nonfiction.
I was a nerd long before I ow
The HIV virus... (Score:4, Funny)
Also known as the human immunodeficiency virus virus.
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Also known as the human immunodeficiency virus virus.
Wait a minute, that gives me an idea... *runs off to lab with microscope* Yes, yes, it all checks out! It's so simple, I don't know why we didn't think of it before.
The Human Immunodeficiency Virus can infect itself!
My God, this changes everything! We'll finally be able to defeat this scourge, and we owe it all to Slashdot Pedants. Here's to you! /salute
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I know you were joking, but wouldn't it be great if we could trick the virus into attacking itself?
I also feel that there may be promise in DNA Computers [howstuffworks.com], but it sounds like those are way far off. Program the DNA computer to seek and destroy certain cells, and then self-destruct when finished.
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this is one nasty little bugger (Score:1)
well seems the aid virus is a nasty little bugger
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Indeed it is, but then again, considering the limited amount of ways for it to transfer, we might actually be able to bring it down quite a bit in the future.
Of course that won't help the millions that are already infected...
Dentasmile MD (Score:1)
News at 11 (Score:2, Informative)
As for transplants being the great new cure-all for HIV infection: no. Transplantation substitutes one batch of
Alarming!! (Score:1)
HIV is smart! (Score:1)
I guess that I'm a little bugged by the summary's wording since it makes HIV seem like an intelligent system that chooses to hide itself. Is that the case or has the latent HIV virus been found in bone marrow?
From the article, it seems as though HIV is able to infect cells in more areas of the body than previously thought, not that the virus has any particular strategy... But I suppose a headline that screams "The AIDS is coming! The AIDS is coming!" probably gets more reads...