

Antibody Kills 91% of HIV Strains - jakarta
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703609004575355072271264394.html?mod=djemalertNEWS

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bradleyland
What happens if we manage to kill 91% of the HIV strains? Won't the remaining
9% of the strains continue to spread and mutate? Then we're back to square
one.

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sliverstorm
At the very least, it could buy a second chance for a lot of people, even if
it's not all of them. I'm sure there's plenty of people out there who are not
career druggies or sluts who had one stupid or unlucky night that is going to
ruin the rest of their lives, and could use a second chance.

EDIT: sorry, I worded this terribly. What I meant was there are many people
who would not catch HIV again, and thus would benefit from a cure to only 91%
of HIV. The people who will continue being reckless and catch it again will,
of course, not benefit from an antibody protecting them from only 91% of HIV,
and that was what I was talking about when I referenced druggies. I'd be more
than happy to give hardcore druggies a cure.

The whole point was not that some people deserve it and some don't, but that
some will gain huge benefits _even if_ it's only 91%, and that is why even
though it's not 100% coverage it's still a plus. (of course, not everyone
will, because some people will go and catch the other 9% right away, so for
them it's not really a benefit, but SOME WILL BENEFIT)

EDIT2: to those of you still downvoting, are you trying to say you think every
single person on the planet with AIDS would not catch it again if they were
cured, but still vulnerable to some strains? That seems kind of unlikely.

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BrandonM
You seem to be implying that "druggies" and "sluts" don't deserve a second
chance

edit: feel free to re-word it if you like, as long as you leave a note that
you edited it.

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profitoftruth85
I remember reading in "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell how STDs like
HIV can be effectively stopped before they become epidemics. If this antibody
can be administered and eliminate a large chunk of people with weaker strains
of HIV, then assuming the stronger strains of HIV are in the same geographic
area, a strong campaign of eliminating HIV spreading behavior in those areas
could really reduce the spread of the disease. But like another poster said we
don't know which strains are most prevalent, so it could be that a stronger
strain is more widespread.

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uptown
"a strong campaign of eliminating HIV spreading behavior in those areas could
really reduce the spread of the disease."

That's a LOT easier said than done. There's a widely held belief in parts of
the world (such as Africa) that having sex with a virgin cleanses one of AIDS.
Because of this, child-rape is extremely prevalent in that part of the world.
I suppose you could make the case that education is the easier part of solving
the AIDS/HIV puzzle, but it's a very large behavioral problem that can not be
solved using a scientific approach.

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profitoftruth85
you have a good point but we have no idea which areas are affected by the
antibody. If Africa has a majority of strains that are cured, then I'm sure
they could stem the spread of the disease in more developed areas. I don't
think that belief is widespread outside of africa, or at least I wasn't aware
of it.

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tokenadult
"'We're going to be at this for a while' before any benefit is seen in the
clinic, he said."

No doubt. It is a first step. Good news if clinical application follows from
this finding.

As usual, I advise readers unfamiliar with Peter Norvig's article on reading
scientific research reports

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

to check that for issues that may not be fully explored by this mass media
report.

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sliverstorm
It's really a testament to nature and Darwin's theories that after all the
time, effort and money we've been spending on AIDS research, the most
successful antibody so far was not created by man, but by his DNA.

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aphyr
I Am Not An Immunologist, but antibodies are usually produced by plasma cells,
after their predecessor B cells are triggered with the appropriate antigens,
right? I'm pretty sure that mechanism and its memory is acquired, not innate.
In other words, it's not coded for by DNA, and you can't inherit that immunity
from the father. Some maternal antibodies _are_ heritable, but I think that's
through shared blood.

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bhickey
For 'Not An Immunologist' you seem to have a pretty good handle on this stuff.
You're mostly right about the heritability stuff, but it's a bit more subtle
than that.

Antibodies are built from heavy and light chains, which are in turn produced
by a combinatorial recombination process: subunits get spliced together. While
paternal B cells aren't going anywhere with regards to heritability, the
heavy/light chain subunit repertoire is heritable! If Donor 45 is a mutant for
one of those subunits, then the effect could very well be heritable.

edit: grammar.

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aphyr
Are _any_ antibodies entirely genetically determined--"off the rack", so to
speak? One would think that having an innate immune response to
extraordinarily dangerous yet infrequently-mutating pathogens (polio, for
example) would be worthwhile.

Haha, maybe I should get go get an immunology text. I think I'm pushing the
limits of Wikipedia.

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Gatsky
The process is amazing. It's a giant highly optimized molecular recognition
library. Random diversity in antibody binding motifs is generated by guided
mutation of the DNA coding for the proteins in the antibody. This wide
repertoire is then screened for antibodies that react to 'self' molecular
patterns in the body, and the B cells producing those self-reacting antibodies
are deleted. One B cell produces only one kind of antibody.

There is also evidence that this antibody repertoire is further primed and
refined by constant interaction with the incredible molecular diversity
produced from the bacteria that live on our mucosa (that is, barrier
interfaces with the environment like the lining of the gut and lungs and the
skin).

The immune system naturally tweaks antibodies to make them more efficient at
binding (Affinity maturation it's called). If you are trying to make a
vaccine, you are better off starting off with an antibody which has already
had all the hard work done on it.

It should be pointed out that the donor they used is actually infected with
HIV, the antibody didn't protect him because prior to infection it wasn't
affinity matured or present in high enough concentration.

If there was a heirarchy of medical treatments, vaccines would surely be at
the top. A jab when you are too young to remember and suddenly debilitating
fatal diseases that have plagued humans for thousands of years are no longer a
problem. The immune system is unique in that you can give information to it,
you can communicate with it. It's an information technology, actually. I think
this is why vaccines are so fantastic, it is a treatment that collaborates
with the body. Pretty much all other medical therapies involved taking a
broken system and breaking it even more to achieve some kind of withered
stability which is inevitability temporary and has consequences for the
organism as a whole (eg giving steroids for rheumatoid arthritis, chemotherapy
for cancer).

The seasonal flu vaccine is a global immune system in action. It's a molecular
rss feed, an app update, a glycoprotein tweet whatever analogy you care to
use, perhaps one day an individual's immune system will be part of a greater
whole linked via information tech. The immune cloud it might be called.

And millions will still die because of war and poor sanitation and
exploitation.

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wan23
It would be pretty sad if someone used the immune cloud to distribute a virus.
I wouldn't want to live in a world where I had to trust AVG anti-virus with my
health.

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bh42
_It would be pretty sad if someone used the immune cloud to distribute a
virus_

Yes, that would be horrible. Imagine a deadly virus which specifically infects
immune cells to spread. We could call it something like Human Immunodeficiency
Virus.

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alanh
This is fantastic, but I can only imagine that 91% will become 9.1% within a
decade, as the unaffected strains become dominant (just like superbugs).

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someone_here
But only 10% of the current number of people infected will be infected by that
point.

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hugh3
But how many AIDS patients have multiple strains?

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FiReaNG3L
All of them

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FiReaNG3L
I love how that got down voted and the general amount of HIV fud in this
thread - I actually do HIV research, I would know.

Most HIV people get infected by one strain, but it mutates so rapidly that in
a single individual, multiple strains co exist at different levels (a major
one and many, many lower levels ones).

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dpritchett
So if there's eventually an HIV vaccine that's 91% effective should everyone
take it just in case? Even if you never expect to contract HIV this seems like
a bit of a Pascal's Wager situation. Why risk it when there's a vaccine
available?

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mmaunder
This is great news.

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rms
:)

