NY Times: Scientists Find New Receptor for H.I.V.

[Miss Philicia]

full story:  source

February 11, 2008
Scientists Find New Receptor for H.I.V.

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
SAN FRANCISCO — Government scientists have discovered a new way that H.I.V. attacks human cells, an advance that could provide fresh avenues for the development of additional therapies to stop AIDS, they reported on Sunday.

The discovery is the identification of a new human receptor for H.I.V. The receptor helps guide the virus to the gut after it gains entry to the body, where it begins its relentless attack on the immune system.

The findings were reported online Sunday in the journal Nature Immunology by a team headed by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

For years, scientists have known that H.I.V. rapidly invades the lymph nodes and lymph tissues that are abundant throughout the gut, or intestines. The gut becomes the prime site for replication of H.I.V., and the virus then goes on to deplete the lymph tissue of the key CD4 H.I.V.-fighting immune cells.

That situation occurs in all H.I.V.-infected individuals, whether they acquired the virus through sexual intercourse, blood transfusions, blood contamination of needles and syringes, or in passage through the birth canal or drinking breast milk.

The findings appear to provide some, if not the main, answers to how and why that situation occurs.

Dr. Warner C. Greene, an AIDS expert and the director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology here who was not involved in the research, said the findings were “an important advance in the field.”

“They begin to shed light on the mysterious process on why the virus preferentially grows in the gut,” Dr. Greene said in an interview.

[Catman]

  I read this yesterday at work and was glad a new discovery was made. I really hope scientists pin "HIV" in a corner and develop a vaccine to blown the little devil out of our immune systems soon...at least they're getting closer each year...