Posted on 05/02/2008 8:31:50 PM PDT by james500
A new type of treatment that trains immune system cells to better recognize the AIDS virus may help control the deadly and incurable infection, Australian researchers reported on Friday.
Tests on monkeys infected with a similar virus shows the treatment controlled the infection, although it does not cure it, and tests are already planned in people.
The treatment is called OPAL, for Overlapping Peptide-pulsed Autologous Cells, and would be categorized as an immunotherapy technique, or a so-called therapeutic vaccine, Stephen Kent of the University of Melbourne and colleagues said.
Writing in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Pathogens, they said the treatment involves mixing a patient's own blood cells with tiny bits of protein from the virus.
These cells are then re-infused into the patient.
"Levels of virus in vaccinated monkeys were 10-fold lower than in controls, and this was durable for over one year after the initial vaccinations," they wrote.
"The immunotherapy resulted in fewer deaths from AIDS. We conclude this is a promising immunotherapy technique. Trials in HIV-infected humans of OPAL therapy are planned."
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.ppat.1000055
OPAL = Tylenol for Homos.
O = orgasmic
P = pleasure
A = absent
L = limits
I honestly hope this treatment works.
Good news. Hope this works for human AIDS.
This isn’t a cure or technically a vaccine. You normally take a vaccine to prevent acquiring a virus. The only people who woudl even take this would already be infected - you put this in a healthy person and you’ve just given them HIV.
“The treatment appears to work best if started right after someone becomes infected.”
After a rape, for example.
It is a vaccine. Search the page for "subunit."
you put this in a healthy person and you’ve just given them HIV.
No. The peptide strings by themselves are not infectious.
Melbourne also has a very interesting and very small publicly listed biotech called Benitec Australia Ltd (ASX BLT) see http://www.benitec.com who are working with Dr John Rossi at the City of Hope Hospital in California. They are running a patient HIV trial at the hospital using gene silencing technology. This is a new frontier in medicine and involves a process that can “turn off” “bad” cells in the body (my rough laymans translation of the process which also involves removing the patients blood to infuse it and return it to the patient). Dr Rossi is reporting postive results from these very early trials in various papers that have and are being presented in the USA. The technology has applications in a wide variety of illnesses.
Great plan, Einsteins! Now someone who would infect 10 other people before dieing will live long enough to infect 100 people.
Hello, there are people who’ve contracted HIV from sources other than sexual or drug-related ones.
Through hospitals, for instance.
A miniscule percentage. Aids is mostly a voluntary infection.
Why don’t they just give people whatever Magic Johnson has been taking? Seems he’s been going on 15+ years with no visual signs of the virus.
Whatever it is. Leaving a potent disease without a cure, or without striving for one, is insanity. All that the virus has to do is mutate to be transmissible by more benign means.
Without striving for a cure? Have you seen the money they throw at HIV? (For a disease that people get by poking themselves and each other?)
If they’re spending money for AIDS research disproportionately compared to other deadly diseases, then yea, that’s a problem.
I just don’t want deadly diseases lying around with no one doing anything about them.
THANKS, bfl
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