hiv

Scientists now agree that HIV started in Africa from people eating dead monkeys–or “bushmeat”–that had the disease. The virus then mutated into a form that can infect human beings. Now researchers say it’s happening again in Africa with a brand-new virus. Will this one be as deadly as AIDS?

Andy Coghlan writes in New Scientist that once again, the virus jumped from monkeys to man from the eating of bushmeat. It was once thought that such a mutation was rare, but now scientists think it may be common. “Our research shows the transmission of retroviruses to humans is not limited to a few, isolated occurrences like those that gave rise to HIV,” says researcher Nathan Wolfe. “It’s a regular phenomenon, and a cause for concern.”
read more

Believe it or not, scientists are using the AIDS virus to treat people who have Parkinsons disease. The AIDS virus can penetrate a cell’s nucleus, which is what makes it so dangerous. Now researchers want to remove the dangerous parts of the virus and use this system to deliver genetic material that can relieve Parkinsons symptoms. “It can deliver a large amount of genetic material,” says Peter Working, “which means that you can deliver big genes to fix big problems.”

In its natural state, the AIDs virus takes control of an immune cell’s genes, and forces it to make copies of the HIV’s genes, and then sends those copies out to attack other cells. This shuts down the body’s ability to defend itself.
read more

Researchers think the place you live in is as important as your behavior, when it comes to getting HIV. “The risk of individual behavior is enhanced or lessened by the type of place in which it takes place,” says Dr. Shelah S. Bloom. She analyzed HIV data from an area in rural Northern Tanzania, but her discoveries can be used to fight AIDS in U.S. neighborhoods and high schools.
read more

Three blood proteins known as “CAF” have been identified that allow some HIV-infected patients to stay healthy for more than a decade. For almost 20 years, researchers have been trying to figure out why some people with HIV do not develop full-blown AIDS, while others succumb to the disease almost immediately.

It turns out that the healthy patients have a type of immune cell that produces a protein that helps fight the virus. Patients whose infections progress quickly don?t have CAF (CD8 antiviral factor). These proteins can inhibit both X4 and R5 HIV viruses in cultures of human cells. They act as antibiotics by destroying the membranes of bacteria, although it?s not clear how they fight HIV, which is a virus.
read more