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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 01 2015, @09:07AM
> The virus hasn't mutated a gene to turn X back on again. Pet dogs have learnt how to use bathroom taps, just saying.
That's no reason no t to try. Even if this only works for 18 months, it will save countless lives and new infections. But the chances are it will continue to be effective.
> Don't worry, you don't have AIDS fucking your immune system, we've fixed that with a drug that fucks your immune system instead!
Yeah but that would only be temporary, surely. Starve the cells to prevent replication, then wait however many weeks for the infected cells to die off naturally. All cells in the human body have a limited lifespan. Quick blood test to make sure the virus cells are all gone, and boom, you're back to normal.
You'd probably have to take all kinds of drugs and precautions during the waiting period to compensate for the effects of the treatment, but that seems like a small price to pay for CURING YOUR FRIGGING AIDS.
Apply this treatment to enough people (doing this in Africa would be challenging to say the least, but exactly the kind of thing charities and NGOs would love to get their teeth into.) and maybe we could give smallpox some company in disease hell.
(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.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.