Study Finds HIV Hiding From Drugs In Gut  E-mail

University of California-Davis researchers have discovered that HIV is able to hide in the mucosal tissues of the intestine.

This allows it to survive attempts by antiretroviral therapy and the body’s immune system to destroy it.  The virus can continue to replicate in the gut mucosa and suppress immune function, even when blood tests indicated that treatment was working.

"This is the first longitudinal study to show that, while current HIV therapy is quite successful in reducing viral loads and increasing T-cells in peripheral blood, it is not so effective in gut mucosa," said Satya Dandekar, professor and chair of the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at UC Davis Health System and senior author of the study.

She says that researchers should be focusing on improving treatment of the gut mucosa where massive destruction of immune cells is occurring.  The lymphoid tissue in the gut accounts for roughly 70 percent of the body’s immune system.

The results of the study suggest that patients treated with antiretroviral drugs should be monitored using gut biopsies.  They should also be taking anti-inflammatory medications to help restore the gut’s immune function.

Dandekar’s team published a study last year that show that some HIV-infected patients had survived over 10 years with healthy levels of T-cells without any treatment.  The reason for this was that they did not see any loss of T-cells in the patients in their gut lymphoid tissue.

While researching patients infected with HIV, Dandekar and her colleagues found evidence of inflammation in the gut, which can disrupt tissue function and promote cell death.  It can also upset the normal balance of gut flora.  They also found that the activity of genes that promote and control mucosal repair and regeneration were suppressed.  The genes that are responsible for the inflammatory response were more active then in normal tissue.

From sciencedaily.com

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