6 ms·

One in 10 children has 'Aids defence'

58 points by dest 10y ago

JumpCrisscross 10y ago
"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 10y ago
  Is aids still inevitable for these children?
  - Retric 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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 10y ago
        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.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- M_Grey 10y ago
  Do they still experience various issues as a result of hosting the virus that you see with other people living in the long term with HIV?
- empath75 10y ago
  This seems like almost a worst case scenario, (obviously not for the kids, but for everyone they might get intimate with) since there can be carriers out there with a huge viral load who have absolutely no idea that they have it.
  - zeveb 10y ago
    Maybe someday AIDS will just be a harmless virus that doesn't bother anyone, since mankind will have acquired an immunity to it?
    - empath75 10y ago
      sure, once the 90% of people who don't have resistance all die without producing offspring.
      - crpatino 10y ago
        Evolution is a two way street, and viruses are way faster to mutate than human beings. HIV is probably already evolving a bunch of different strains with variying degrees of mortality and morbidity. Those that tend to remain dormant for longer or otherwise fail to kill the host are more likely to spread faster. If you consider that plus the fact that humans are already begining to develop defenses, you comment could be qualified as: 90% of people who don't have resistence face worse health outcomes, - up to but not necesarily an early demise, - and end up producing fewer offspring.
tantalor 10y ago
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-treatment.html http://www.livescience.com/48015-berlin-patient-hiv-treatmen... virus returned after a couple of months
- exhilaration 10y ago
  HIV hides in "sanctuary sites" or "viral reservoirs" around the body and can come back even if blood tests show no traces of it for months or years, like that miracle baby that was in the news a few years ago: Initially after that child – the so-called Mississippi baby – was taken off the drugs, there was no virus detectable in her blood, and her doctor claimed a cure. Unfortunately, after four years the virus returned and she had to restart drug treatment. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27112-hivs-hiding-places-at-last-revealed-by-simple-scan/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27112-hivs-hiding-pla...
- lawpoop 10y ago
  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-ray-brown-doctor-who-cured-him.html http://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2015/02/timothy... This was in 2007.
- aisofteng 10y ago
  It leads to quick death from something as minor as the common cold because the body has no defense mechanisms in place. This is one of many reasons why radiation therapy patients are so fragile.
TheBeardKing 10y ago
Why is it Aids not AIDS in this article?
- morley 10y ago
  Looks like it's BBC News style: http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/news-style-guide/article/art20130702112133530 http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/news-style-guide/art... > 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).
  - ekianjo 10y ago
    They don't mind that it could be confused with the noun ?
    - SamBam 10y ago
      South Park aside, I think there are few instances where it could reasonably be confused with the noun.
      - cpncrunch 10y ago
        It is confusing because in English it is almost always spelt AIDS. Before clicking the link I was thinking for a while wondering what the heck the article was about. I assumed they had just mis-capitalised AIDS. If you look in google news, only the British media uses Aids and Opec. The rest of the world uses capitalised. I'm from the UK, and this is definitely not normal in the UK. It just seems to be some strange (and incorrect IMO) style that the British media has adopted. Their own exceptions (NICE, PC, SAD, UKIP) show the ridiculousness of their policy.
        SamBam 10y ago
        I don't find the list of exceptions so bad. They're ones where you either pronounce the letters ("PC") or where it would be genuinely confusing "SAD"). I guess the question is, what is the value of styling "Aids" such? My assumption is that they would say that such acronyms have become words in English, people understand "Aids" or "Nato" as a "thing" and don't even think of it as an acronym (just like "scuba diving" or "laser" or "radar"). If it has basically become a word, it just slows reading down to write it in all caps. ...but I can see it's a debatable issue. This is probably one of those things where some words will become like "laser" and "radar," and some won't. BBC is trying to be on the forefront in guessing which words will be.
franciscop 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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.
    - marcosdumay 10y ago
      > But with just one generation it should be enough, right? Only for diseases that kill or disable people fast.
outworlder 10y ago
"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.

58 points by dest 10y ago

"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 10y ago
Is aids still inevitable for these children?
- Retric 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
M_Grey 10y ago
Do they still experience various issues as a result of hosting the virus that you see with other people living in the long term with HIV?
empath75 10y ago
This seems like almost a worst case scenario, (obviously not for the kids, but for everyone they might get intimate with) since there can be carriers out there with a huge viral load who have absolutely no idea that they have it.
- zeveb 10y ago
  Maybe someday AIDS will just be a harmless virus that doesn't bother anyone, since mankind will have acquired an immunity to it?
  - empath75 10y ago
    sure, once the 90% of people who don't have resistance all die without producing offspring.
    - crpatino 10y ago
      Evolution is a two way street, and viruses are way faster to mutate than human beings. HIV is probably already evolving a bunch of different strains with variying degrees of mortality and morbidity. Those that tend to remain dormant for longer or otherwise fail to kill the host are more likely to spread faster. If you consider that plus the fact that humans are already begining to develop defenses, you comment could be qualified as: 90% of people who don't have resistence face worse health outcomes, - up to but not necesarily an early demise, - and end up producing fewer offspring.

tantalor 10y ago

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-treatment.html http://www.livescience.com/48015-berlin-patient-hiv-treatmen... virus returned after a couple of months

exhilaration 10y ago
HIV hides in "sanctuary sites" or "viral reservoirs" around the body and can come back even if blood tests show no traces of it for months or years, like that miracle baby that was in the news a few years ago: Initially after that child – the so-called Mississippi baby – was taken off the drugs, there was no virus detectable in her blood, and her doctor claimed a cure. Unfortunately, after four years the virus returned and she had to restart drug treatment. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27112-hivs-hiding-places-at-last-revealed-by-simple-scan/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27112-hivs-hiding-pla...
lawpoop 10y ago
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-ray-brown-doctor-who-cured-him.html http://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2015/02/timothy... This was in 2007.
aisofteng 10y ago
It leads to quick death from something as minor as the common cold because the body has no defense mechanisms in place. This is one of many reasons why radiation therapy patients are so fragile.

TheBeardKing 10y ago

Why is it Aids not AIDS in this article?

morley 10y ago
Looks like it's BBC News style: http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/news-style-guide/article/art20130702112133530 http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/news-style-guide/art... > 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).
- ekianjo 10y ago
  They don't mind that it could be confused with the noun ?
  - SamBam 10y ago
    South Park aside, I think there are few instances where it could reasonably be confused with the noun.
    - cpncrunch 10y ago
      It is confusing because in English it is almost always spelt AIDS. Before clicking the link I was thinking for a while wondering what the heck the article was about. I assumed they had just mis-capitalised AIDS. If you look in google news, only the British media uses Aids and Opec. The rest of the world uses capitalised. I'm from the UK, and this is definitely not normal in the UK. It just seems to be some strange (and incorrect IMO) style that the British media has adopted. Their own exceptions (NICE, PC, SAD, UKIP) show the ridiculousness of their policy.
      - SamBam 10y ago
        I don't find the list of exceptions so bad. They're ones where you either pronounce the letters ("PC") or where it would be genuinely confusing "SAD"). I guess the question is, what is the value of styling "Aids" such? My assumption is that they would say that such acronyms have become words in English, people understand "Aids" or "Nato" as a "thing" and don't even think of it as an acronym (just like "scuba diving" or "laser" or "radar"). If it has basically become a word, it just slows reading down to write it in all caps. ...but I can see it's a debatable issue. This is probably one of those things where some words will become like "laser" and "radar," and some won't. BBC is trying to be on the forefront in guessing which words will be.

franciscop 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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.
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    > But with just one generation it should be enough, right? Only for diseases that kill or disable people fast.

outworlder 10y ago

"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.