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New strategy to halt HIV growth: block its sugar and nutrient pipeline. HIV has a voracious sweet tooth, which turns out to be its Achilles' heel, reports a new study from Northwestern Medicine and Vanderbilt University.
After the virus invades an activated immune cell, it craves sugar and nutrients from the cell to replicate and fuel its wild growth throughout the body.
Scientists discovered the switch that turns on the immune cell's abundant sugar and nutrient pipeline. Then they blocked the switch with an experimental compound, shutting down the pipeline, and, thereby, starving HIV to death. The virus was unable to replicate in human cells in vitro.
The discovery may have applications in treating cancer, which also has an immense appetite for sugar and other nutrients in the cell, which it needs to grow and spread.
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2015/05/hivs-sweet-tooth-is-its-downfall.html
[Abstract]: http://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1004864
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday June 01 2015, @07:17PM
I don't think you understand the process. (I know I don't.) As I read the article this merely halts replication, it doesn't kill the virus. And that means that while the disease is suppressed, it isn't gone. Viruses can generally "live" for quite a long time without metabolizing. I wouldn't even be sure that it means you aren't infectious, merely that you aren't currently dying (from AIDS), and that you are a lot LESS infectious.
This is still a good thing. It just wouldn't be some miracle cure.
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