For two decades, the prevailing concept in HIV research has been that antiretroviral therapy effectively eliminates active viruses that cause severe infections but leaves behind a reservoir of infected cells that are seemingly undetectable by the immune system until treatment is discontinued. At that point, the virus reemerges forcefully.
Although these damaged viral particles are not infectious, they appear to weaken the immune system. This discovery offers a potential explanation for the virus’s resurgence when individuals stop taking antiretroviral drugs.
The two recent studies “solidify – or should solidify – that paradigm shift,” says immunologist R. Brad Jones of Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, who coauthored a related perspective in the same journal. Steven Deeks, an HIV expert at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, notes that “no one actively questioned the presence of an active reservoir, but here [the researchers] find evidence that it might in fact matter.”
These findings are disheartening in the broader quest to cure HIV because they demonstrate that the immune system recognizes but fails to effectively respond to the viral proteins, even when the virus’s replication is halted with medication. Immunologist Lydie Trautmann of the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine in Bethesda, Md., describes this as making “our job much harder.” However, it also provides a glimmer of hope: The new findings suggest a potential path toward enhancing the immune response to HIV, she says.
2023-10-05 07:00:00
Article from www.sciencenews.org