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http://www.abcnews.com/sections/living/DailyNews/aids_pregnancy0330.html
Chemical Produced by Pregnant Women May Block HIV
Discovery Offers Promise
HEALTH and LIVING
“ It
would
seem that
motherhood
has
contributed
yet again to
the effort
against
cancer."”
—David
Scadden
W A S H I N G T O N, March 30 — An unidentified
chemical produced by pregnant women appears to
help block infection by the HIV virus that causes
AIDS, researchers reported today.
Dr. Robert Gallo of the Institute of Human Virology
in
Baltimore, who helped discover HIV, said he and
colleagues
were backing away from a previous theory that it was the
pregnancy hormone human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG).
Writing in the journal Nature Medicine, they said that an
unknown but associated chemical was responsible instead.
They dubbed this mysterious element "hCG associated
factor" or HAF.
Gallo first found the pregnancy effects on HIV in
1995,
when he and his team accidentally left male and female
lab
mice in the same cages.
They found the females that became pregnant seemed
to
resist development of Kaposi's sarcoma, a form of cancer
strongly associated with AIDS. Researchers later found
the
mice also resisted HIV infection.
Attention turned to hCG, which is produced in the
first
three months of pregnancy.
"An ironic twist to the story is that for years all
of the
researchers involved, including Gallo, neglected to test
whether pregnant mice actually produce an equivalent of
hCG," Nature Medicine said in a statement.
"Mice do not produce hCG," Gallo's team admitted in
its
report.
Gallo's team used a technique known as gel
permeation
chromatography to test hCG and ruled out the possibility
that
hCG was responsible for the effects.
They are now focusing on HAF.
Good Results in Monkeys
"HAF appears to inhibit directly viral replication, at
least in
part, because it inhibits HIV replication in CD4 T-cells
and
macrophages (in a test tube)," they wrote. CD4 T-cells
and
macrophages are immune system cells infected by HIV.
HAF also seemed to work in monkeys infected with
SIV,
their version of the disease, Gallo said.
David Scadden of Harvard Medical School said further
studies may come up with a treatment not only for HIV,
but
for many cancers.
"It would seem that motherhood has contributed yet
again
to the effort against cancer, maybe even superseding your
mother's cancer-preventing dictum 'Eat your broccoli',"
he
wrote in a commentary.
But HAF would first have to be isolated and produced
for
tests. "The critical work is now in the final
purification and
chemical identification of HAF and its large-scale
production," Gallo said in a statement.
"I believe this can be achieved within one or two
years
and can then be brought into clinical trials," he added.
"This is not without problems—the only known source
is
first trimester human urine and it took 40 liters (42.4
quarts)
just to get this far," Nature Medicine said in an
editorial.
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Cindy Curtis , RN, IBCLC ~ Virginia , USA
ICQ # 412812 mailto:[log in to unmask]
Benefits of Breastfeeding Home Page http://www.erols.com/cindyrn
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