Link HIV vaccine offers clues to salmonella

LONDON (Reuters) – The investigation of a link between salmonella and HIV shows that the AIDS virus damages the immune system in ways that doctors did not know before, providing new avenues for vaccine development.

Typically, salmonella causes fatal infections in the bloodstream of people with HIV, particularly in Africa. But although this has been known for over 25 years, only now researchers have a scientific explanation. <1000/P>

This is not the deficiency of the immune system that causes the problem, but access to antibodies. The discovery should help prevent the development of new vaccines run into dead ends.

“It is quite surprising and suggests that here we are dealing more with a consequence of immune dysregulation rather an immune deficiency itself, “said lead researcher Cal MacLennan, University of Birmingham.

human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is usually seen as a virus that stops the immune system work by killing cells called CD4, which orchestrate the body”s response to foreign invaders.

In the case of salmonella, MacLennan and colleagues found that the blood of infected adults HIV-contained high levels of antibodies to salmonella. The difficulty appeared when antibodies adhered to the wrong part of the bacterium and, therefore, failed to kill her.

The research, published Thursday in the journal Science, indicates that the response body”s immune is very different in people infected with HIV compared with those without HIV, and the difference is a lower immune response.

The discovery is important for doctors trying to treat people with HIV as those who develop vaccines to protect HIV-positive patients from other infections.

It could also help in finding an effective vaccine against salmonella to show that some current approaches are wrong.

Researchers at Birmingham and the University of Malawi found ineffective antibodies in Africans with HIV linked to a structure that protrudes from the surface of the salmonella, known as lipopolysaccharide (LPS ).

Hence the subject, the antibodies the immune system deviated from the correct area of the surface of the bacteria, which allows them to develop.

This is important for vaccine manufacturers, since the LPS is currently being investigated in early clinical trials as a potential target for a vaccine against salmonella. “A vaccine of this kind could do more harm than good,” said

MacLennan.

(Published in Spanish, Juan Jose Lagorio)