`HIDDEN' AIDS DISCOVERY SHOWS VIRUS NEVER IDLE

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 25, 1993                   TAG: 9303250013
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium
`HIDDEN' AIDS DISCOVERY SHOWS VIRUS NEVER IDLE
The AIDS virus can hide for years in lymph nodes before launching a final, lethal attack on patients, scientists report in a new finding that shows the disease is never idle. The discovery may lead to earlier treatment.
Two studies to be published today in the journal Nature show that once a person is infected, the AIDS virus can congregate in lymphoid organs, such as the tonsils, spleen, adenoids and lymph nodes, where it steadily infects key blood cells and breaks down cells that filter out viruses.
Eventually, the filter cells in the lymph organs are destroyed and infected blood cells spill out into the body's circulation system, leading to a collapse of the immune system, the classic sign of the lethal stage of AIDS.
The researchers said the findings show that drugs must be found to combat the AIDS virus from the moment of diagnosis and that therapy cannot be relaxed during periods when there are no symptoms.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a co-author of one of the studies, said the discovery answers one of the key mysteries about the course of the AIDS virus disease.
Fauci said that many patients infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, experience an initial bloom of virus particles in their blood, a condition called viremia, within weeks of exposure. But then traces of virus disappear from blood tests and patients often live without HIV symptoms for up to 10 years. Eventually, there is another explosion of viremia, usually followed by death from some opportunistic infection.
"Since there was little virus in the blood, it was a puzzle why this process inevitably progressed and occurred," Fauci said. "The bottom line of the study is that this virus is present in the lymph nodes . . . and it is actively replicating . . . even when there is little or no virus activity detected in the blood."
In effect, said Fauci, the period that doctors call the latent or symptomless stage of the HIV is not latent at all. The virus is thriving in the lymph nodes and insidiously eroding the body's immune system toward a final collapse.
A second study, co-authored by Dr. Ashley T. Haase of the University of Minnesota, confirmed that HIV thrived in the lymphoid tissue during the so-called latent period of disease. He said the virus in the lymph nodes was actively infecting lymphocytes, called CD4 T cells, that reside in the lymph nodes or which were passing through.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB