Bad news for those hoping for an AIDs cure. As you know, the active virus (HIV1) has a genome made of RNA. However, thanks to an enzyme it possesses called reverse transcriptase (which has led to Nobel prizes), it copies itself into DNA and integrates into the genome of lymphocytes. There it sits presumably doing nothing, but it’s always capable of activating and producing more infectious virus.
We seem to have fought the virus to a draw, using a cocktail of drugs which attack different aspects — HAART (Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy). Success is usually considered being unable to detect viral RNA in the blood (see later). However blood cells are short-lived. What about the longer living lymphocytes found in the lymph nodes and spleen.
That’s what was studied in a current paper [ Nature vol. 530 pp. 5` – 45 ’16 ] but in only 3 people. All had no detectable virus in the blood (under 48 copies/milliLiter — an incredibly tiny amount — see later). What they did was to biopsy lymph nodes in the groin on study entry and at 3 and 6 months.
Then they sequenced the genomes of the lymphocytes from the nodes, to study the HIV1 DNA integrated into the genome. They found that the genome changed with time. This is very bad. Why?
Because it implies that, even though you the virus in the blood, the virus was not staying latent in the lymph nodes, but coming out of the lymphocytes and forming infectious virus which then mutated. Subsequently the mutated virus integrated into the genome of another lymphocyte. So even with what we consider excellent control, the virus is not purely latent. Drug resistance could arise from mutations (although they didn’t see it in this study).
Clearly, more people need to be studied this way (but serial biopsies? It will probably be done in prisoners, if such things are still done).
It’s worthwhile thinking about how incredibly selective and accurate our methods of analysis are. 48 copies of the viral RNA per milliLiter of blood is the lower limit of detection. Remember that water has a molecular weight of 18, so a liter of distilled water is 1000 grams / 18 grams = 55.5 Molar. A mole has 6 x 10^23 molecules. A milliLiter is 10^-3 liters. So 1 milliLiter of distilled water has 55 * 6 * 10^23 * 10^-3 == 3 * 10^22 molecules of water in it so the assay is finding 48 or more molecules of HIV1 RNA in the water haystack. Even figuring that the concentration of water in blood is 1/10 that of distilled water, this is still impressive.
Chemiotics II 