POZ Community Forums
Meds, Mind, Body & Benefits => Research News & Studies => Topic started by: tryingtostay on April 17, 2017, 11:33:30 pm
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"The fact that HIV-infected macrophages can persist means that any possible therapeutic intervention to eradicate HIV might have to target two very different types of cells."
Link:
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-04-hiv-reservoir.html
Article:
HIV cure research to date has focused on clearing the virus from T cells, a type of white blood cell that is an essential part of the immune system. Yet investigators in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine have found the virus persists in HIV-infected macrophages. Macrophages are large white blood cells found in tissues throughout the body including the liver, lung, bone marrow and brain. The discovery of this additional viral reservoir has significant implications for HIV cure research. These findings were published in Nature Medicine on Monday, April 17.
"These results are paradigm changing because they demonstrate that cells other than T cells can serve as a reservoir for HIV," said Jenna Honeycutt, Ph.D., lead-author and postdoctoral research associate in the UNC Division of Infectious Diseases. "The fact that HIV-infected macrophages can persist means that any possible therapeutic intervention to eradicate HIV might have to target two very different types of cells."
Last spring, this laboratory lead by J. Victor Garcia, Ph. D., professor of medicine, microbiology and immunology at UNC School of Medicine, demonstrated the ability of tissue macrophages to support HIV replication in vivo in the total absence of human T cells. But how macrophages would respond to antiretroviral therapy (ART) and whether macrophages represented a reservoir for HIV after treatment were unknown.
Macrophages are myeloid lineage cells that have been implicated in HIV pathogenesis and in the trafficking of virus into the brain. Using a humanized myeloid-only mouse (MoM) model devoid of T cells, Garcia and his team showed that ART strongly suppresses HIV replication in tissue macrophages. Yet when HIV treatment was interrupted, viral rebound was observed in one third of the animals. This is consistent with the establishment of persistent infection in tissue macrophages.
"This is the first report demonstrating that tissue macrophages can be infected and that they respond to antiretroviral therapy," Honeycutt said. "In addition, we show that productively infected macrophages can persist despite ART; and most importantly, that they can reinitiate and sustain infection upon therapy interruption even in the absence of T cells—the major target of HIV infection."
Now that Garcia and his team know HIV persists in macrophages, the next step will be to determine what regulates HIV persistence in tissue macrophages, where in the body persistently infected macrophages reside during HIV treatment and how macrophages respond to possible therapeutic interventions aimed at eradicating HIV from the body.
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Yeah, so I think HIV infecting macrophages was also already well known, as studies looked into HIv infected macrophage in macrophage rich tissues before.
I don't believe we will have a cure and tend to see the cure word just as something used to sell newspapers and as a pitch tool for funding and not as a real goal, so for that reason I also don't see HIV infected tissue as a barrier when i think of research.
I tend to see HIV research as just finding out more and from that perhaps having more effective treatments and prevention tools.
Jim
http://jvi.asm.org/content/90/20/8968
https://retrovirology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1742-4690-9-82
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Yeah, I was kinda wondering about the topic written. Was like, wow wtf, they just now find this out? I think this is a part of the HIV research field that doesn't have as much research attention as finding a way to rid the T cells of HIV. I thought I read one article a while back about a research team working on Macrophage HIV infection. My overall impression of the article put a damper on my hopes, yet this could be the one-two punch needed to knock out this virus.
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I too read this and thought 'Maybe they should have looked at some of the existing research about this'....
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I thought I read one article a while back about a research team working on Macrophage HIV infection.
Yep.. this one was from over a year ago :-\
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160308134758.htm
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Macrophages I'm learning are quite amazing, according to this article they not only help the immune system fight bad guys but they also help your 💓 beat..
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170420141857.htm
Sure would like to see more research to clear them of hiv.
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Sure would like to see more research to clear them of hiv.
yea! more pills to take :P ::)
;D don't get me wrong. I used to take 32 pills a day and I'm down to 5 now. I wouldn't mind throwing in a couple more if they'd squeeze a bit more HIV outta me. ;)
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yea! more pills to take :P ::)
Or a bigger one ???(http://sr.photos2.fotosearch.com/bthumb/THK/THK280/e00010638.jpg)