Salmonella can wreak havoc in (or kill) people infected with HIV -- and not for the reason scientists have long assumed.
Instead, a new study in Science shows that Salmonella's ability to cause disease in HIV patients does not appear to stem from a weakened or ineffective immune system, but an overactive one that actively protects the bacteria. The findings may help direct research on developing effective vaccines against the pathogen. "In an HIV-infected person, you would expect that if you're not seeing clearance of a pathogen, it's because [the person is] not making any antibodies against that specific pathogen," said immunologist linkurl:Susan Moir;https://ugsp.nih.gov/scholars_mentors/mentors_d.asp?m=07&id=1522 of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases's Laboratory of Immunoregulation. "But they found the opposite -- they found a lot of antibody, but it was directed against the wrong thing."...
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Image: Wikimedia commons, V. Brinkmann Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology |
SalmonellaSalmonellaSalmonellaSalmonellaSalmonellaSalmonellaSalmonellaSalmonellaSalmonellaC.A. MacLennan, et al., "Dysregulated Humoral Immunity to Nontyphoidal Salmonella in HIV-Infected African Adults," Science, 328:508-12, 2010.
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