UNITED STATES: HIV Infects Women Through Healthy Tissue

UNITED STATES: HIV Infects Women Through Healthy Tissue - US Study

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2008. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

UNITED STATES: HIV Infects Women Through Healthy Tissue - US Study

Reuters (12.16.08) - Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Julie Steenhuysen

A new study shows HIV targets healthy genital tissue in women and not just breaks in the skin, as had previously been thought. "Normal skin is vulnerable," said Thomas Hope of Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, who presented the study's findings Tuesday at a meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in San Francisco. "It was previously thought there had to be a break in it somehow," he said.

Employing a new technique they devised, Hope and colleagues at Northwestern and Tulane University worked with vaginal tissue newly removed during hysterectomy surgeries. They introduced HIV tagged with fluorescent, light-activated tracers, then watched under a microscope as the virus penetrated the outer lining of the female genital tract, known as the squamous epithelium. In addition, they observed the same process in non-human primates.

In both cases, the researchers found HIV was able to rapidly move past the genital skin barrier to reach immune cells deeper in the tissue. According to Hope, the findings suggest that HIV takes aim at places in the skin that had recently shed skin cells, similar to the way skin on the body flakes off.

Scientists previously assumed that HIV required a break in the skin or that it gained access through a single layer of skin cells that line the cervical canal.

Hope said the study may help explain the failure of some efforts to prevent HIV infection in women. One clinical trial in Africa in which women used a diaphragm to block the cervix had no effect on reducing HIV transmission, he noted. Studies of drugs designed to prevent lesions in genital herpes have also proven ineffective at preventing HIV, he said.

What the study's findings make clear is the need for the use of condoms, which are highly effective at blocking HIV transmission. "The sad part is if people just used a condom, we wouldn't have this problem," Hope said.
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