HIV's Effect On White Blood Cells Questioned By New Research

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070521212919.htm

"Science Daily — Scientists have refuted a longstanding theory of how HIV slowly depletes the body's capacity to fight infection, in new research.

The researchers were looking at T helper cells, a class of white blood cells which recognise infection and co-ordinate the body's immune defences. They are attacked by HIV, and their numbers gradually decline in HIV positive patients. It has long been a major puzzle why this process of depletion is so slow, often taking 10 years or more.

One popular theory has been the "runaway" hypothesis, which says that T cells infected by HIV produce more HIV virus particles, which activate more T cells, that in turn become infected, leading to an uncontrolled cycle of T cell activation, infection, HIV production and cell destruction.

However, this new study in PLoS Medicine shows that this theory cannot explain the very slow pace of depletion that occurs in HIV infection. The research team used a mathematical model of the processes by which T cells are produced and eliminated to show that if the runaway theory was correct, then T helper cell numbers would fall to very low levels over a number of months, not years"

Now, who was saying that VERY same thing YEARS ago? Could it have been Peter Duesberg?

The rest of the article can be read at Sciencedaily.com

ALSO WATCH

http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=3983706668483511310&q=deconstructing+the+my