A group of scientists from Imperial College London and the University of Johns Hopkins have developed a new method to prevent the HIV virus, which causes AIDS, from damaging the human immune system (defense system/antibodies). This discovery could be a step towards creating a vaccine to combat AIDS.
Researchers found that when cholesterol is removed from the HIV membrane, the virus is unable to damage the immune system. When a person contracts any virus, the antibody system emits an innate response and thus defends the body from infections. Researchers believe that HIV causes the body to emit exaggerated responses and this ends up weakening the entire immune system.
When scientists removed cholesterol from the membrane surrounding the virus, HIV was unable to trigger the immune system's automatic defense responses. This result goes against the idea that HIV causes the body to overproduce the body's innate response to defend itself against common viruses, which makes it weak.
According to Adriano Boasso, the great difficulty in creating a vaccine for HIV lies in the fact that most vaccines "instruct the body's adaptive system".
