This week, a team of Yale researchers published a paper showing that they had successfully videotaped HIV spreading in real time. Until now, doctors and researchers didn't know exactly how the retrovirus and its associated disease, which kills 1.5 million people every year, spread inside its host.
The researchers stained the virus with a fluorescent substance before infecting mice with the disease, then used an imaging machine to visually track the virus as it climbed its way through their DNA.
"It's all very different than what people thought," said Walther Mothes, associate professor of microbial pathogenesis and co-senior author the paper.
They found that the virus works its way through the host's body by using proteins to bind itself to certain types of white blood cells, and then reorders itself to efficiently wriggle its way into the lymph nodes. You can see this in action via their videos. Although the activity can be a little obtuse for the average viewer, scientists who study HIV/AIDS consider it an important step in finally understanding more thoroughly how HIV works.
Within one to two days after the infection, the virus is fully established and secure in the lymph node tissue, which allows it to then start spreading throughout the host's body. The lymph nodes are an organ of the lymphatic system, which is more or less the guard dog for the immune system. Weakening the lymphatic system so directly is what makes HIV/AIDS so deadly if left untreated.
This finding could impact HIV treatment and a possible preventative or cure. If researchers can find a way to stop the proteins from helping the virus attach to the white blood cells (and thus, stop them from getting into the lymph nodes to begin with), the virus might not be able to transmit itself at all. Basically, it would enter the host's body, find nowhere to go, and eventually die.
More study is needed on how HIV operates, but this could be an important moment in the history of AIDS research.
The study was funded by the NIH, The Leopoldina German National Academy of Scineces, and the China Scholarships Council. It was published Oct. 1 in the journal Science.
