Potential cause of HIV associated dementia revealed

[Growler]

http://explore.georgetown.edu/news/?ID=64534&PageTemplateID=295

[freewillie99]

Regular moderate exercise as well as some types of anti depressants have been shown to increase levels of BDNF in the brain.  Get off your couch.

Revision: Here's an article that references how exercise supports BDNF production:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/how-exercise-benefits-the-brain/

[Mishma]

I wouldn't be surprised if exercise increased levels of BDNF (as well as neurotrophins) but that's not the issue here. GP120 of HIV interferes with the proper cleavage of proBDNF by host proteins resulting in a toxic form of the growth factor. Until we can purge HIV from the CNS this problem will persist for the foreseeable future.

[jkinatl2]

I wouldn't be surprised if exercise increased levels of BDNF (as well as neurotrophins) but that's not the issue here. GP120 of HIV interferes with the proper cleavage of proBDNF by host proteins resulting in a toxic form of the growth factor. Until we can purge HIV from the CNS this problem will persist for the foreseeable future.

This.

Replies like this make me understand why most people who rely solely on mass media for medical information end up seriously misinformed. My occasional forays into technical writing tend to walk the same difficult line between being comprehensible and being accurate.

Short form: You CAN NOT write at less than a college level and be entirely accurate.

[Mishma]

I obviously didn't express myself to jkinatl2 satisfaction. I wasn't writing a review just a response to the notion that if we'd just exercise our dementia would go away.

I was a medical resercher for 20 years first with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and then with the University of Utah. I don't rely on the mass media for my medical information. I use NCBI and specifically PUB MED to do my searches of the published peer reviewed  literature. I subscribe to Science, Nature and Scientific American.

In 2004 I had to resign my faculty position due to HIV Dementia. Since then I've tried everything under the sun including exercise, antioxidants, antidepressants, memantine, aricept and plaquinil to no avail. Even if we had a viable drug to restore the conversion of the proform of BDNF to the active (and non toxic) BDNF form we would still be at least a decade away before the product reached the market. We're talking petri dish to the bedside with Phase 1 through 4 clinical trials.

To my mind we need to purge the brain and other reservoirs of HIV. No HIV no neurotoxins.