Protein that activates immune response harms body's ability to fight HIV
Findings from a study in animals appear to demonstrate that temporarily blocking a type of protein, called type I interferon, can restore immune function and speed up viral suppression during treatment with anti-viral drugs for people with chronic infection of the virus that causes AIDS . This is the first study to show the role that type I interferon plays in driving the body's immune destruction during HIV infection, said Scott Kitchen, associate professor of medicine in the division of hematology/oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and senior author of the study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Clinical Investigation . "This finding is completely counterintuitive, because many believe that the more interferon at work, the better," said Kitchen, a member of the UCLA AIDS Institute. "We show that the type of interferon being produced during chronic stages of HIV infection has detrimental effects on the body's ability to fight ...