Study shows immune system can recover
For the first time, researchers have shown through an animal model that once antiretroviral therapy kills existing HIV in the body, the immune system can reconstitute.
Researchers at UCLA depleted T-cells in the immune systems of 29 HIV-infected SCID-hu mice, and then gave them varying combinations of antiretroviral drugs. In some of the mice, new immune stem cells from a different donor were injected.
What they found was that the thymus which helps form the immune system during early life by creating T-cells remains intact despite HIV infection. The results also showed that the virus directly attacks the T-cells themselves, but not the basic elements needed to create T-cells or early stem cells.
"Our results are telling us two things: the micro-environment of the thymus is healthy enough to produce new immune cells; and the stem cells that were already present in some of the implants remained intact and continued to function," says Jerome Zack, PhD, associate director of the UCLA AIDS Institute.
In addition, the study, which was published in the October issue of Nature Medicine, shows that antiretroviral drugs also did not destroy the thymus, and that the virus affected only the immature T-cells.
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