HIV: Learning From Monkeys and Chimps

0.cached.png

By Mary Carmichael

See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.

HIV, like any other virus, has one goal--and it isn't killing. The goal is to reproduce, and since viruses do that by hijacking their hosts' cells, they can't further their own existence after they've killed off those cells. The ideal virus (for its own sake, and also for ours) might be one that didn't make its host sick--more of a hitchhiker than a killer.

Such viruses do exist, including HIV-related viruses found in African green monkeys, sooty mangabeys and other primates. In these monkeys, says virologist Frank Kirchhoff, "the immune system tolerates the virus." The reason, says a new paper in Cell by Kirchhoff and others, may be that the simian viruses suppress the monkeys' immune reactions to them. But in its evolution from monkey virus to human scourge, HIV lost that characteristic. As a result, the human body goes haywire fighting the virus, exhausting its own immune system.

The chimp version of the virus--unlike the monkey one, but like the human one--doesn't temper the immune system. So why don't chimps get sick? According to new research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, chimp immune systems are simply less responsive. Taken together, Kirchhoff says, the papers suggest scientists should consider "changing the treatment strategy for HIV," initially reducing the immune system's response, rather than boosting it.

Read More on News