March 8th, 2010

AIDS, HIV Could Hide in Bone Marrow.  Reports are indicating that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS could actually hide in a patient’s bone marrow, thus avoiding the antiretroviral treatments given. 

The discovery was made by Dr. Kathleen Collins of the University of Michigan. Although the reports sound scary and like bad news, figuring out why and how the virus hides could lead to treatments that could potentially help eradicate the AIDS virus.

This means that a dormant infection can exist in someone’s body, and then once bone marrow is converted to red blood cells the virus could become active.

Contracting HIV isn’t as fatal as it was a couple of decades ago, thanks to various drug treatments available.  However, when individuals stopped taking such treatments their virus would flare up.  Researchers then knew that the virus was lying dormant somewhere in the body, but they did not know where. All of this took place despite the level of AIDS in a patient’s blood dropping to zero.

Jerome Zack from UCLA states the following about finding the cure for AIDS:  “we as yet do not have easy ways to eliminate these dormant sources of virus. The challenge to the field is to find all sources of virus — this study identifies one — and identify ways to eliminate them. Only by developing strategies to eliminate all the different sources can we purge HIV from the body.”

Hopefully within the next few years there will be a treatment regimen that will help individuals get a cure if they contract the AIDS or HIV virus.
Source:

Business Week