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August 2nd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda WEDNESDAY, Aug. 1 (HealthDay News) — Helper T-cells normally
support the immune system, but a new study involving mice shows
HIV-infected T-cells help transport the virus throughout the body and
infect other T-cells.
Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital said their findings
could lead to improved treatments that could help control the movement of
infected T-cells in the body.
“We have found that HIV disseminates in the body of an infected
individual by ‘hitching a ride’ on the T-cells it infects,” study author
Dr. Thorsten Mempel, of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for
Immunology and Inflammatory Diseases, said in a hospital news release.
The researchers examined the behavior of HIV-infected human T-cells
using a “humanized” mouse model, which has an essentially human immune
system, according to the release.
After confirming that human T-cells enter and migrate within the
animals’ lymph nodes, the researchers injected them with HIV engineered to
give off a green fluorescent protein, which allowed them to monitor the
movement of infected cells.
They found that within two days, the HIV-infected T-cells moved more
slowly than healthy T-cells. They also were evenly distributed within the
lymph node, but they remained close to the injection site.
“Infected T-cells continue doing what they usually do — migrating
within and between tissues such as lymph nodes — and in doing so they
carry HIV to remote locations that the virus could not reach as easily,”
Mempel said. “There are drugs that can manipulate the migration of T-cells
that potentially could be used to help control the spread of virus within
a patient.”
Ten percent to 20 percent of the HIV-infected T-cells formed long, thin
extensions that trailed behind the moving cells. These elongated cells
contained the HIV envelope protein, which researchers thought might cause
infected cells to “tether” to uninfected cells and form these
extensions.
Infected cells had multiple nuclei, the researchers found, which shows
they were formed when several cells combined.
The researchers also injected a separate group of mice with HIV. This
group, however, was treated with an agent that prevents T-cells from
leaving the lymph nodes.
After two months, the researchers found the levels of HIV in the
animals’ blood and in lymph far from the injection site were much lower
than the levels of the animals not treated with the agent. They noted that
the agent used to suppress the migration of infected T-cells did not
reduce the level of HIV in animals that already had an established HIV
infection.
“While our observation of tethering interactions between infected and
uninfected … cells suggests that HIV may be transmitted between T-cells
by direct contact, we will have to clearly show this in future studies and
explore how important it is relative to the transmission by free virus,”
said Mempel, who also is an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard
Medical School in Boston.
The study was published Aug. 1 in the journal Nature. Scientists
note that research with animals often fails to produce similar results in
humans.
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about HIV and
AIDS.
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