FLICKR; NIAID/SETH PINCUS, ELIZABETH FISCHER, AUSTIN ATHMAN
For HIV to develop into full-blown AIDS, the virus must deplete a subset of immune cells called CD4+ T cells, disabling an infected person’s adaptive immune system in the process. The details of precisely how HIV kills these T cells have only recently come to light, and a study published in Cell Reports last month (August 27) suggests the process differs from what many scientists expected. Researchers have found that the virus is most deadly to CD4+ T cells when it is transferred from active cells to resting ones.
“What our data show is that the major mechanism underlying CD4+ T cell depletion . . . requires cell-to cell transmission,” said study coauthor Warner Greene, an immunologist at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology ...
