Gut health may reduce HIV progression: Study
It’s possible that improving gut health is the key to stopping the progression of HIV: Study. According to the findings of a study that was conducted with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), which is the monkey version of HIV, treatments ought to target the underlying source of those issues and concentrate on repairing the stomach.
NEW DELHI: Restoring and improving gut health may be key to slowing HIV progression to AIDS, according to a study conducted in monkeys.
The research, published in the journal JCI Insight, shows that tackling only systemic immune activation — a strong predictor of progression of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) disease — and inflammation when attempting to control disease progression and comorbidities is not effective.
The study performed with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), the monkey form of HIV, found that treatments should target the root cause of those problems and focus on healing the gut.
“Every study so far targeting systemic inflammation by addressing immune activation has had very short-lived results,” said study lead author Cristian Apetrei, professor at the University of Pittsburgh in the US.
“Upon reflection, we realised those results told us something very important: Inflammation generated by the virus damaging the intestinal lining is driven by a separate mechanism from immune activation.
We just had to prove it,” Apetrei said.
The hallmark of HIV infection is the hijacking of immune cells called “helper T cells” to make copies of the virus.
Scientists have focused on treatments that stop this replication process.
However, virus suppression only “calmed” immune activation and inflammation but did not restore them to pre-infection levels.
For decades, scientists have also known that the gut is an immediate target of HIV.
Within weeks of infection, the virus depletes the vast majority of immune cells in the intestines that are the depository of immunologic memory and protect the gut against invading pathogens.
When these cells are destroyed, the intestinal lining gets damaged, and gut flora enter the bloodstream.
People with the fastest progressing HIV have less healthy gut microbiomes and more intestinal lesions.
However, past thinking was that calming immune activation and stopping HIV replication was key to controlling disease progression, and that gut health was a sideshow.
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