Aids 'cured' With More Aids

[bav]

From Reuters

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U.S. experiment uses AIDS to fight AIDS

by Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An AIDS virus genetically engineered to fight other AIDS viruses worked better than expected, suppressing the virus and renewing the immune systems of a few patients, researchers reported on Monday.

The study involved just five people, and such an approach needs years more study, they cautioned -- but the surprising results offer new hope both for the field of gene therapy and for treating the fatal and incurable AIDS virus.

"The goal of this phase I trial was safety and feasibility and the results established that," said Dr. Carl June of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, who led the study.

"But the results also hint at something much more," he added.

"It seemed to have a vaccine-like effect in that the immune system was better in most of the patients than when they enrolled. We are trying to study the mechanism."

The AIDS virus infects close to 40 million people worldwide and has killed 25 million. A cocktail of drugs can help control infection, but there is no cure and no vaccine.

The drugs cause sometimes severe side-effects in some patients and the virus can evolve resistance, so that patients have to move to new drug combinations.

Gene therapy is a promising but troubled field of research based on the premise that altering genes can cure disease. It has cured only a few patients, and some have developed leukemia as a consequence. One gene therapy volunteer died in 1999.

June's team tried a new gene therapy approach, first crippling the HIV virus, they report in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The virus is gutted so that it only has half the size of the original or pathogenic virus," June said in a telephone interview.

ANTISENSE APPROACH

The so-called envelope gene remains, and is reversed, a manipulation called antisense.

The researchers then recruited five patients with HIV who were beginning to fail treatment, meaning the drugs no longer worked and the virus was beginning to damage their immune systems.

June's team removed the immune cells, CD4 T-cells, that are attacked by HIV. The researchers infected the CD4 cells in the lab with their newly engineered antisense HIV virus, then infused them back onto the patients.

When HIV or any other virus infects a cell, it injects its own genetic material into the cell. The cell is turned into a virus factory, sometimes pumping out thousands of copies of a virus before it explodes.

After the new antisense virus was infused, newly infected cells pumped out defective virus, June said.

"The virus particles that are released are, like, sterile. They are nonpathogenic," June said.

This test was meant only to show that the approach was safe, and three years later, none of the patients show any ill effects.

The treatment appears to have helped restore the immune systems of four of the five patients, and the virus remains partly suppressed.

"We put back more (CD4 cells) than we took out. We don't know if that is why their immune system gets better, because there are more soldiers, or whether it got better because of better antiviral effects," June said.

The therapy is being developed by Gaithersburg, Maryland-based VIRxSYS Corp. and the studies are partly paid for by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Phase II trials are underway in HIV patients who have disease well-controlled by drugs. June said it is not yet clear if the treatment could work only in infected patients, or might even be used as a preventive vaccine some day.

[Homicidalheathen]

Not new though, most imunizations are mutations of the origional virus.

[AstralCrux]

Not new, but it could, in a few years or so, save lives.

[Homicidalheathen]

Lets hope! wouldn't it be something if all of our kids could be immunized for this and never have to worry?

[Troy Spiral (13)]

This is similar to the "take them off the drugs totally" system. That is, stop fighting it so that it relaxes its evolution. Then wack it with a vengence all at once (with the possiblity of killing the patient) so it doesnt get a chance to evolve into a resistant strain. They've managed to somehow (it seems) minimize the "kill the patient" part with this system quite a bit which is the real breakthrough.

The problem is the basic nature of HIV itself. That is its a "super virus" and evolves so efficently.

It has an almost perfect mix of mildness, (so that it doesnt kill its host too fast) replication speed, (not too fast to wake up the immune system to much AND uses the immune system itself as its host)... not to slow so that the virus just becomes inert) and evolution (insane fast).

The really badass killer viral/bactierals (in terms of speed of killing) kill the patient off to fast for it to spread (Ebola). Aids doesnt do this, so it gets to spread from host to host.

While others... are so mild that they can spread and spread and spread and never destroy the host nor are they bad enough for the immune system to take much notice and kick its ass outright. (Like the common cold)

Aids/HIV is in the evolutonary "sweet spot" were it can evolve, replicate, and destroy in such a pefect mix that its able to either (fairly obviously)

1. Evolve and/or

2. Duplicate and/or

3. Destroy

Depending on its needs and what it is thats comming to fight it VERY efficently.

In ancient times, this sort of virus WOULD eventually pretty much just kill all its hosts and then thats it. IT would dissapear , go dormant or become a very small problem in isolated populations.

Doesnt work that way nowadays. We as a culture have devloped this thing called compassion fast transportation and we need to try and save these people rather than just drive them out of the village or wall them up in their houses and wait for them to die. Blame it on their sinful ways or some other BS and call it gods judgement. So we have a problem our ancestors wouldnt have had. We didnt beat the Bubonic/Numonic Plague it beat itself for the most part. (It did get a little help from us) Could go on for another 10 pages about that... ok *shuts up*

With such a good "mix" that its able to survive even the best treatments. What they think , long term is that the cure will only come with custom-made drugs for the worst cases, becasue of its ability to evolve much better than a normal bacteria/virus the oldschool system of "take all of this perscritpion until the bactiera/virus is dead" dosent work for most cases.

AIDs / HIV is almost a useless term as it changes so much, so rapidly that your not even dealing with the same orgainism from person to person. The different drugs they have are for different strains of HIV, and there are SO many different strains and new ones being custom made in every patient. It evolves so well that tradtional concepts of "antibiotics" while useful for understanding whats going on... are fairly useless in terms of previous methods of treatment.

Ok theres my one page summary of all the shit i wasted a good 100+ hours researching over the years and just oversimplifed to a rediculous level.