HIV Microbiology & Origins
In this image, captured by an electron microscope, HIV (orange) is budding off this CD4 T immune cells (green).
“How HIV Instigates Cellular Suicide to Cause AIDS.” (POZ, January 2014) A scientific breakthrough sheds major light on a mystery that has perplexed scientists across the decades of the AIDS epidemic.
Researchers have struggled to assemble the clues as to how the immune systems of people with AIDS are so devastatingly brought to heel. It has been a long and winding path toward understanding the precise cellular mechanisms connecting HIV to AIDS. Now, one team of scientists has made a significant break in the case, clarifying the step-by-step process by which the virus causes the syndrome and challenging previous theories about how CD4 cells faced with the virus die off en masse.
Researchers have struggled to assemble the clues as to how the immune systems of people with AIDS are so devastatingly brought to heel. It has been a long and winding path toward understanding the precise cellular mechanisms connecting HIV to AIDS. Now, one team of scientists has made a significant break in the case, clarifying the step-by-step process by which the virus causes the syndrome and challenging previous theories about how CD4 cells faced with the virus die off en masse.
“Was HIV Born a Century Ago?” (HIV Plus, October 2008)
A widely-praised new study, published in the October 1 edition of Nature, has placed HIV's first jump from chimpanzee to man sometime between 1884 and 1924. This shifts the estimated window of time back nearly three decades from a previous estimate.
Calling the study "an elegant piece of work," National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci stressed the importance of confirming that HIV "was around decades and decades before it became an obvious epidemic."
A widely-praised new study, published in the October 1 edition of Nature, has placed HIV's first jump from chimpanzee to man sometime between 1884 and 1924. This shifts the estimated window of time back nearly three decades from a previous estimate.
Calling the study "an elegant piece of work," National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci stressed the importance of confirming that HIV "was around decades and decades before it became an obvious epidemic."