Tonsil tissue used in research

Scientists at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) have developed a new model for studying the destructive effects of AIDS in live tissue samples. The critical events in the development of AIDS take place in lymphoid tissue, but AIDS research has been hampered by the fact that an animal model of HIV infection that readily mimics human AIDS does not exist.

The NICHD scientists have overcome this limitation by culturing and infecting pieces of tonsil (which is composed largely of lymphoid tissue) obtained from tonsillectomies. With this advance, they have helped illuminate one of the central questions of HIV pathology: What triggers the eventual development of AIDS in people who carry HIV?

The finding appears in the March issue of Nature Medicine.