
One in 10 children has 'Aids defence' - dest
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-37438837
======
tantalor
If keeping the immune system from activating helps, what's the effect of
wiping out the immune system completely? e.g., radiation and bone marrow
transplant

Edit: This article explains: [http://www.livescience.com/48015-berlin-patient-
hiv-treatmen...](http://www.livescience.com/48015-berlin-patient-hiv-
treatment.html)

 _virus returned after a couple of months_

~~~
lawpoop
Related: A man with HIV and cancer was cured of HIV infection when he received
a bone-marrow transplant from a donor who was HIV-immune:
[http://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-
news/2015/02/timothy...](http://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-
news/2015/02/timothy-ray-brown-doctor-who-cured-him.html)

This was in 2007.

------
outworlder
"Adult humans' immune systems tend to go all-out to finish off the virus in a
campaign that nearly always ends in failure.

Children have a relatively tolerant immune system, which becomes more
aggressive in adulthood - chickenpox, for example, is far more severe in
adults due to the way the immune system reacts. "

This is fascinating. It looks like a kid's immune system is in "learning mode"
for a while. Which makes sense, gives it time to get exposure to pathogens and
compounds.

------
franciscop
The HIV rates in South Africa are among the highest, so does that mean that
it's evolution following its course? The ones that react to the Virus would
die and the ones that ignore it survive, giving those people a (much?) higher
chance of survival and reproduction. Similar to how the _superbacterias_ that
are popular now were created in the same place.

~~~
mikeash
There hasn't been enough time for evolution to act in this case. HIV has only
been endemic for a generation or so. Bacteria can run through dozens of
generations a day, so the process goes much faster there.

Assuming HIV isn't cured, then this defense would probably form the basis of
eventual widespread resistance to HIV in humans, perhaps centuries from now.
But it didn't arise as a response to HIV.

~~~
franciscop
But with just one generation it should be enough, right? Some individuals are
resistant and some others not; the non-resistant ones die and the next
generation is of mostly resistant; the next one would be mainly individuals
more resistant; etc

~~~
mikeash
Only if exposure is total and death before reproduction highly likely. Even in
South Africa, the vast majority of the population isn't infected. Those who
are infected still often pass on their genes before they die. Unchecked HIV
will certainly increase the concentration of these genes over time, but with
the current situation it'll take many generations.

------
JumpCrisscross
"The researchers analysed the blood of 170 children from South Africa who had
HIV, had never had antiretroviral therapy and yet had not developed Aids.

Tests showed they had tens of thousands of human immunodeficiency viruses in
every millilitre of their blood.

...

Prof Philip Goulder, one of the researchers from the University of Oxford,
told the BBC: 'Essentially, their immune system is ignoring the virus as far
as possible.'

'Waging war against the virus is in most cases the wrong thing to do.'"

~~~
gravypod
Is aids still inevitable for these children?

~~~
Retric
Biology is very rarely binary. Chances are some will and some will not before
they die. The interesting question is what percentage can make it to say 50
without problems.

It's possible similar crossovers to SID > AIDS may have happened many times in
the past and due to slow travel and worse healthcare the outbreaks just died
out. So, some percentage of the population might have relative immunity to
similar diseases.

It's also possible for some new mutation to show up that deals with AIDS over
time.

Or, they could be all dead before 30 without treatment it's hard to say.

~~~
gravypod
I have to say biology and other subjects are really strange coming from a CS
background.

A lot of stuff doesn't have a "single right answer" it seems.

~~~
dekhn
This is a wise observation and I didn't really appreciate it until I was about
40. I came from the hybrid route (hacker who started learning biology early)
and I think most people who come to bio from physics or CS have a lot of
learning to do about how biology is "different" from those fields. The
underlying systems tend to be complex- far more complex than people who work
on distributed systems or HEP are comfortable working with. They are
ambiguous, highly multidimensional, there are complex feedback mechanisms and
redundancies, etc.

------
TheBeardKing
Why is it Aids not AIDS in this article?

~~~
morley
Looks like it's BBC News style:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/news-style-
guide/art...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/news-style-
guide/article/art20130702112133530)

> However, our style is to use lower case with an initial cap for acronyms,
> where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word (eg Aids,
> Farc, Eta, Nafta, Nasa, Opec, Apec).

~~~
SixSigma
> acronyms ... where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word

If you wouldn't pronounce it, it's not an acronym

~~~
earless1
Are FBI and CIA not acronyms?

~~~
roflc0ptic
Pedantically speaking, no. They're initialisms. Unless you call them the
fibbies and the cya.

In everyday conversation, yeah, they're acronyms.

