Woman may hold secret to AIDS Vaccine

[emeraldize]

http://news.aol.com/health/article/woman-may-hold-secret-to-aids-vaccine/130997

[leit]

One of the many elite suppressors they will never get anything out.
Sorry for my disheartening opinion and thanks anyway for the news, Emeraldize. 

[PeteNYNJ]

I saw this when I logged into AOL today.   Is the woman in question one of our own?

http://news.aol.com/health/article/woman-may-hold-secret-to-aids-vaccine/130997?icid=200100397x1207710705x1200404350[/shadow]

[emeraldize]

Hey Leit
No apology needed. I'm not 100% clear on what you wrote, but I gather you think it will not come to any conclusive nor beneficial result. And, you may be right. The odds certainly haven't been in any vaccine's favor thus far. It is certainly a headline that will turn heads--that's one outcome of which we can be certain.
Em

[Ann]

Em, Pete, I merged your threads as they are about the same subject. I can choose which thread title to use when I merged threads so I used Pete's, as his actually explains what the thread is about.

Em, it would help if your thread titles gave us a clue as to its subject matter. If yours had, maybe Pete wouldn't have double-posted. Thanks.

Ann

[emeraldize]

right, i'll be better at that in the future, Ann --   as soon as I saw his, I figured you'd merge them

[emeraldize]

Is the woman in question one of our own?

If she is, she's never chatted it up, not openly anyway. The only elite suppressor female who's been open about her status in the forums is from California not Maryland.

[Matty the Damned]

No the woman in this article isn't Loreen.

MtD

[Dachshund]

The article itself seemed like typical fare. The comment section after the article was a bit of an eye opener.

[Ann]

The article itself seemed like typical fare. The comment section after the article was a bit of an eye opener.

Yeah, like this one:

Alicekrm

09:07 AMAug 13 2008

I understand that Israel developed the Aids virus to reduce population in Africa since they wanted the diamonds from there. Aids is so prominent here in America that it is unsafe to even ride public transportation. Now, when vacationing, I make sure it isn't in the USA since they allow Aids people to walk around in public, possibly touching people or coughing in restaurants.

The ignorance that still surrounds hiv makes me feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall. Might as well be, I guess. I'd love to come face-to-face with this Alicekrm and give her a big ole kiss - with tongues - then tell her I'm hiv positive just to watch her collapse with fright. Would serve her right. There's no damned excuse for this kind of ignorance in this day and age, especially from someone with an obvious connection to the information available on the internet.

[Iggy]

This kind of article is exactly what I had in mind when I wrote in another thread about how the media misses the mark in it's coverage of many studies and findings - particularly in the choice of the headline, and how things can be taken out of context.

By comparison, The Kaiser Network report is headlined with: Researchers Hoping That 'Elite Controller' Could Help in HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development which gives less of an unfortunate impression that secret to a vaccine is just waiting to be unlocked once they figure out this one specific person.

It's also (not) surprising to me that the Reuters (and many other agencies) miss what I think is a significant statement in the study as reported in the Kaiser article:

The researchers said the study disproved some theories about elite suppression, including those that claimed such suppression always involved a defective or weakened HIV strain, which is easier for the immune system to attack, or that genetic variants confer a protective effect in suppressors.

The full report: Transmission of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 from a Patient Who Developed AIDS to an Elite Suppressor  is available as a link at the end of the Kaiser article, if one has a subscription to the Journal of Virology, which unfortunately I do not...(hint hint to any who does and who wants to review and provide more details)

http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=53957

[leit]

I'm not 100% clear on what you wrote, but I gather you think it will not come to any conclusive nor beneficial result.

Exactly! They have been studying LTNPs, elite controllers, elite suppressors, etc. (choose the definition you like best) for years, with the usual conflicting and inconclusive results.
IMHO, it's like trying to find the reasons of the differences between George Clooney and me... and then level them all!

[leit]

The ignorance that still surrounds hiv

I fear it's not true ignorance, but excuses that people use to have a "right" to hate us (and they REALLY hate us).

[Ann]

Oh it's ignorance all right; people fear/hate what they don't understand.

It's likely a willful ignorance though, I'll grant you that.

[leit]

It's likely a willful ignorance

That's exactly what I meant, Ann: willful ignorance, plus widespread myths and personal inventions, as a pass for real, pure wickedness.

[leit]

Did "wonder woman" make them change their mind again?

A series of experiments showed that the woman has a robust CD8-positive T cell response to the virus. At the same time, she had an antibody response to HIV that "wasn't impressive, by any stretch of the imagination."
The implication is that "immune control of the virus is possible," he said, but through T cells, not neutralizing antibodies. Such a T-cell vaccine would be used therapeutically, rather than to prevent infection.

Neutralizing antibodies! - NO, T cells! - NO, neutralizing antibodies! - NO, T cells! - NO, neutralizing antibodies! - NO, T cells! - NO, neutralizing antibodies! - NO, T cells! - NO, neutralizing antibodies! - NO, T cells! - NO, neutralizing antibodies! - NO, T cells! - NO, neutralizing antibodies! - NO, T cells! - NO, neutralizing antibodies! - NO, T cells!... And always nothing in sight.

[emeraldize]

Hi Leit

I thought I'd share something with you that might be of interest and help you to relax your perspective on this on again, off again, maybe this, maybe that aspect to the ever-changing views of HIV's researchers.

I recently enrolled in the NIH's leukapheresis study or what is their study of long-term non-progressors. I would have happily enrolled in it a while back, but I wasn't attractive to them then as I didn't have the typical HLA markers and I don't have neutralizing antibodies. I'm not an elite controller, I'm what the Walker study defines as a viremic controller.

After speaking with the person who's running the study, turns out it wasn't my sustained interest in enrolling that was acted upon, it was hers. Because I'd been enrolled in another study there of repurposing an arthritis drug for HIV treatment, they'd collected a lot of blood samples over a series of seven visits. She was randomly reviewing for people who were doing well but without the typical LTNP traits.

She contacted me because I'm an anomaly and now wants to use me as a control group (her words) against some others. She told me those who have neutralizing antibodies tend not to be afforded any particular protection from them over the haul.

I share this with you because it helps to illustrate there are so many unknowns and misleading descriptions. I don't fit any of the usual LTNP profiles, yet I'm doing okay--not off the charts, but doing okay and meeting the various studies' criteria.

I envision there will continue to be fluctuations in what is reported worldwide, what is suspected, and what is hoped. No matter how we get to an understanding, a vaccine, a new therapy, whether through a woman in Baltimore, or a child in South Africa, it's going to be filtered through the enthused media and the committed researchers and will be read word for word by our hopeful parents and friends and yet looked at dubiously by many of us.

Suffice to say, there are a lot of people trying to figure it out and we can only hope they can, and do whatever we can to support them.

Em

[Ann]

Hi Em,

Would you please tell me what are the criteria for the NIH's leukapheresis study? I'm curious because my doc calls me a long term slow progressor (11years, no meds) and I'm wondering how closely I fit - or don't fit - the criteria for this type of study.

You can send the info in a PM if you wish, if you consider this a hijack, but I suppose it's related and others might want to see if they fit too.

Thanks!

Ann

[emeraldize]

Ann

I don't consider this a hijack at all. Here is the link to the study description with gives inclusion/exclusion criteria, contact info and more.

http://clinicalstudies.info.nih.gov/cgi/detail.cgi?A_2002-I-0086.html

BTW, regarding your doc's assessment it would depend upon your numbers over time.  I recall reading there are docs who opt to never use the term LTNP and consider everyone a slow progressor (but IMHO that's despite evidence to the contrary and likely based specifically on their patients' numbers).

Em

[Ann]

Thanks Em!

I'm just on my way out the door, but I'll have a close look at it later and if anyone's interested, I'll come back and say what's what.

Oh and yes, my doc's assessment is after monitoring my numbers for seven years. I wasn't monitored for the first four years of my infection. He considers someone to be a LTNP if they have an undetectable viral load - mine has always been very low since we got rid of the hep C, but never undetectable.

Ann

[emeraldize]

 He considers someone to be a LTNP if they have an undetectable viral load

That's not the way it's assessed here. Categorically, there are the elite (which have the "undetectable" less than 50 copies level) and the viremic controllers, the latter of which have a detectable viral load. I think it's generally considered around 2000 or less, but don't quote me.

[leit]

Dear Emeraldize and Ann,

Yor are really altruistic people, and I appreciate you very much for this reason. But I'm still of the opinion that this kind of genetic research will always yield too many partial results - i.e. NO result.
Of course, I hope I'm completely wrong.