How does HIV destroy your immune system

How does HIV destroy your immune system?

The Human Immunodeficiency virus leads to AIDS because it destroys immune cells known as CD4 T. While this has been established by researchers, scientists were not sure of these cells are killed.

A couple of Papers published on December 19, 2013 shed light on the molecular mechanism that leads to the death of the CD4 T cells in lymphoid tissues. The research teams led by Warner Greene managed to demonstrate that majority of CD4 T tells situated in the lymphoid tissues respond to the presence of HIV, despite their ability to oppose full infection.

The immune cells sacrifice themselves through a process known as pyroptosis, which is a highly inflammatory form of death that attracts a vast majority of CD4 T cells to the area. This actually creates a cycle thereby wrecking havoc on the immune system. The way in which HIV kills immune cells is complicated that it was anticipated earlier, exclaimed Richard Koup of the Immunology lab at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland.

These papers have outlined the paths that HIV takes in order to destroy CD4 T cells, which leads to serious consequences on the immune system. The death of CD4 T cells during an infection has been attributed to apoptosis. In 2010, Greene and his team revealed that 95 percent of CD4 T cells are categorized as bystander cells that are actually 'abortively infected' and not 'productively infected'. It was therefore established that although the virus penetrates, it cannot replicate or integrate.

In order to understand HIV pathogenesis better, Greene and his team looked at the human spleen and tonsil tissues that were cultured in the laboratory and then spiked with HIV. The conclusion of the study is stated below:

When HIV productively infects the permissible CD4 T cells, they are killed by a process known as apoptosis, which relies on the activation of an enzyme named caspace – 3.
When HIV abortively infects non – permissible CD4 T cells, death is cause by the process called pyroptosis, which relies on the activation of caspace – 1.
Greene and his colleagues have reportedly made use of a technique called DNA affinity chromatography, which helped them in identifying proteins in the CD4 T cells that determine the presence of HIV DNA and alert the enzyme caspase – 1 that leads to destruction of the immune cell. These discoveries would certainly help researchers come up with treatment that suppress the death of CD4 T cells and inflammation in cell culture.

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