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HIV Transmission Captured On Video
Technology Review has promising news on the AIDS front: researchers have captured HIV T cell transmission on video. The upshot could be new avenues of treatment. "The resulting images and videos show that, once an infected cell adheres to a healthy cell, the HIV proteins... migrate within minutes to the contact site. At that point, large packets of virus are simultaneously released by the infected cell and internalized by the recipient cell. This efficient mode of transfer is a distinct pathway from the cell-free infection that has been the focus of most prior HIV studies, and reveals another mechanism by which the virus evades immune responses that can neutralize free virus particles within the body."
I have an idea how to stop HIV and it involves the same technology found in terminator seeds.
In a nutshell, the government sanctions the agricultural giant Monsanto to engineer a new strain of HIV virus with a limited lifespan beyond a certain generation with ability to recode the DNA as it progresses. This virus could be hostile to all the known HIV strains out in the wild and force them out. People voluntarily get infected with this new virus as means of guarding against incurable HIV infections. Since this new virus can be regulated upon demand, Monsanto can then minimize the damage for a low monthly fee by supplying you with various off switches to reduce the infection. They could set up various plans depending on your budget. Silver and Gold plans would have limited side effects to encourage you to upgrade to the Platinum plan and get better viral sterilization methods.
I think this could work.
I always found biology quite fascinating. All those little buggers that can kill a human just by sheer numbers.
You should hang around statisticians then. They're a hoot!
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Ok I'll bite ... "HIV Transmission Captured On Video" ... I can't be the first to think, its probably been caught on videos before now!
It's been caught on video many times before - and sold.
Scary stuff, really.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lara_Roxx
http://www.adultfilmdatabase.com/video.cfm?videoid=61710
American Society for Microbiology (2008, June 5). Humans Have Ten Times More Bacteria Than Human Cells: How Do Microbial Communities Affect Human Health?. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 29, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/06/080603085914.htm
> Roxx, on learning about James being HIV-positive, said, "It totally made me realize how I trusted this system that wasn't to be trusted at all, because it obviously doesn't work," and "I thought porn people were the cleanest people in the world."
"The system" in this case is inherently flawed.
After initial HIV infection, it can take up to six months for someone to start producing HIV antibodies (seroconvert). And unfortunately, most HIV tests don't check for viral load, but check for the presence of antibodies.
So basically, you have a window period of up to six months where you are contagious but will come up negative on tests.
Patients on the chemotherepy ward were discussing how Cervical Cancer is more prevalent in women who start having sex early, have sex often and/or with multiple partners.
The conclusion they came to is that excess stimulation of a sexual nature actually causes the cancer to develop. The guy with testicular cancer nodded approval, the woman with Brest cancer started to cry, The woman with throat cancer managed to cough out "not true".
The guy with Prostate Cancer ran away screaming "I am not gay. I am not gay"
There. See, people can joke about Cancer patients.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
No, if it killed instantly then people wouldn't need to be careful not to get it because it would be extremely rare (unless it had a very common transmission vector which it didn't kill).
I think the interesting part about this discovery is that aids is traveling from cell to cell without the need to release virons to float around hoping to find a cell. I don't recall hearing about any other virus that spreads by cell-to-cell contact. It appears as though the infected cell press up against an uninfected cell, form a pocket between them (that is not connected to "outside" and then release some virons into this pocket. The virons contain the necessary "key" to get into a cell, but normally their odds are not good simply because they have to float around and hope to bump into a T cell, one at a time, in just the right way.
This process has several advantages. First, it's not wasting virons by simply multiplying them inside the cell until the cell bursts, leaving the virons to float around hoping for a chance contact. Second, since the body isn't being flooded with virons, it severely delays and slows the auto immune response of the body which isn't going to react anywhere near as fast to such a low-volume threat of a handful of virons leaking out now and then vs thousands popping onto the scene continually. Third, in addition to being hand-delivered to a target cell, there's a ton of them at the contact site concentrated right on the target cell's doorstep, not just one, so infection is pretty much guaranteed.
It's sort of the difference between a country sending an "army" to their enemy, by stirring up a villagefull of people to go attack on their own individually, vs assembling a strike force and attacking at one spot on the wall all at once. Clearly the latter is more effective.
Scarry stuff. AIDS looks to have evolved a very potent new method of infection. It's too bad we don't know more about how this process works. AIDS is probably throttling its viron production so the infected cell survives to infect other cells, rather than multiplying virons as fast as possible to get the most of them released into the body as fast as possible. Interferfon iirc slows the replication of AIDS virons inside the cell, so it makes sense that throttling an already throttled process should be an effective treatment.
If a cell has been taken over and is personally going to another cell and staging an attack, this may be a very difficult problem to overcome. Small, relatively inert virons can only hope for a chance contact in just the right way with a target cell. An entire cell coming to get you is a bit more like a bacteria problem, they have a heck of a lot more resources at their disposal. It's like the enemy taking over one of your tanks, vs coming at you as a walking soldier. Difference is, when the enemy "gets you", he doesn't destroy your tank... he dumps some men INTO your tank and now he has TWO tanks.
What this all boils down to is AIDS has found a new way to use the cells it hijacks. Most other viruses use them as self-destructing viron factories, and a few as places to hide and lay dormant for later relapse. But using cells as lingering attack platforms is just plain scarry.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Causality between a microorganism and disease is commonly established through the demonstration of Koch's Postulates. These are not hard-fast rules; some of Koch's Postulates are difficult to prove through ethical experiments. However, in the case of HIV, all of Koch's Postulates have been fulfilled:
Anti-retroviral therapy - while itself is quite dangerous and filled with side effects - has nevertheless been shown in numerous studies to reduce morbidity and mortality in HIV+ patients. Anti-retroviral therapy has also been compared to placebo, and its effects have been found to be beneficial over placebo. Other studies, mostly performed in Africa, have examined the "natural history" (i.e. the untreated progression) of HIV infection; such studies have shown that the natural history of HIV infection leads to the severe immunocompromise characteristic of the AIDS syndrome, followed by death.
Yes, there is plenty of money flowing into AIDS research and drugs. However, that fact fails to prove anything related to this discussion, one way or another. There was a point in time when the HIV-AIDS connection was, indeed, a hypothesis; many people cite evidence from that period of time in making the claim that HIV->AIDS is still a widely disputed theory. However, a careful examination of the current scientific evidence will reveal an overwhelming body of evidence supporting a causal relationship between HIV and AIDS.