HIV virus can hide in the bone marrow

According to the latest study in the United States, AIDS viruses can hide in the bone marrow, evade the attack of drugs and 're-export' when the body runs out of medicine. And this important finding will lead to better treatment for patients.

Blood cells are destroyed by HIV virus (white)

Detecting this escape and re-export is considered the first step but it is considered to be the top-rated research for many years. Dr. Kathleen Collin, of the University of Michigan (USA) and her colleagues published the results of the study in Nature Medicine that HIV can stay in the bone marrow cell for a long time, which will become blood cells. .

'The virus stays dormant in bone marrow cells but when these stem cells develop blood cell walls, they will re-produce and cause new infections. The virus will destroy blood cells and "jump" to other healthy cells, continuing to "act" , explains Collin.

In recent years, AIDS medicines have helped reduce a clear death rate but patients need to take medication for life or will recur. There is a situation that only when taking the drug, the virus is controlled, but the drug is stopped. The culprit of this condition may be a young blood cell called macrophages. Another type of cell is related to T cells (white blood cells) and research has focused on these cells.

Although these findings cannot explain the rise of HIV in all cases, it does show that there are factors that need to be taken into account and this has led Ms. Collin to focus on studying hematopoietic cells. . And these findings are especially important because they show why patients will have to continue taking the medication after the infection seems to have ended.

'I don't know how many people realize that even though AIDS drugs help reduce mortality, it's still far from reaching the goal of cure. This means that just stopping the drug is a shortening of life years, " said Collin.

The study was funded by the American Institute of Health, the Burroughs Wellcome Foundation, the University of Michigan, Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship, American Science Foundation and Bernard Mass Fellowship.