The HIV virus can infect blood stem cells and remain dormant there, warn US scientists in the pages of the journal Nature Medicine.
The discovery of the cellular hiding place – a type of viral containment – is very important for the development of new AIDS treatment strategies.
HIV is a severe chronic immunodeficiency virus characterized by a lack of a normal population of immune cells, resulting in the development of numerous infections. According to statistics, there are about 40 million people infected with HIV or suffering from AIDS in the world. Although many antiviral drugs have been developed to extend the life of people infected with HIV, none of them can cure the disease.
Currently available drugs work by stopping the spread of the virus, but HIV infection is hard to treat because some cells infected with the virus are resistant to treatment.
Kathleen Collins and a team from the University of Michigan have shown in her latest research that blood stem cells can become infected with HIV, and most importantly, they represent a place where the virus stays in a dormant state inaccessible to drugs until differentiating factors activate it. (PAP)