Health

New on HIV
by Claudia Sonea

The AIDS virus is studied for a very long time trying to find a cure to it and that in the context that the immune system hides it very well and today's drugs can't reach. After many failed attempts, now scientists finally have discovered how HIV builds one of those fortresses, thus in they're exploring whether a drug already used to fight a parasite in developing countries just might be the answer. Researchers at University of Rochester have long struggled unsuccessfully to attack what they call reservoirs of dormant HIV, blood cells called macrophages that HIV hijacks and turns into viral hideaways. By identifying the exact steps that HIV takes to do that some existing drugs, including a long-used treatment for leishmaniasis called miltefosine, can block the main step and lead to the self-destruction of these cells. Most of the drugs used today turned HIV into a chronic infection, without eliminating the virus they can't reach the two known pools of cells where the virus can lie dormant, ever ready to resurface (memory T cells form one such pool- ensures that some diseases had as a child won't repeat ever again). The second pool is formed of macrophages that roam the body looking for invaders like bacteria. Normally once these cells are contaminated they die, but the HIV keeps it alive longer. Therefore the new matter is to find the best way to simply kill those cells. According to the Rochester team report on Thursday in the journal Retrovirology. HIV produces a protein that turns on a particular cell-survival pathway and it ultimately activates an enzyme called Akt that in turn prevents cell suicide. Dr. Baek Kim, lead researcher revealed that after finding that the Akt pathway is a culprit in certain cancers he conducted some experiments and found out that Miltefosine and a cousin named perifosine both rapidly killed the macrophages, leaving HIV without hideout.NIH's Jeang, who thinks that it is necessary to study miltefosine in monkeys infected with SIV- the monkey version of the AIDS virus. Don't go away, more to come!

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080131/ap_on_he_me/hiv_hideout;_ylt=AsjJDd3nvQdgTYZZRCwGDHCs0NUE

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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Edited by Federica Paddeu

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posted by Blog TechSource @ 6:26 AM