Chicago Tribune (CT) - Friday August 28, 1987
Jon Van, Science writer

The finding, reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science, could explain how infection with the AIDS virus can cause loss of memory and other neurological ailments, according to Dr. Mark Gurney, one of the researchers at the U. of C.

It also could point toward new therapies to combat AIDS, Gurney said.

Gurney and his colleagues found that a portion of the outer envelope, or layer, of the AIDS virus can inhibit actions of a substance called neuroleukin, which is necessary for some kinds of nerve cells to grow and thrive. They also found that a small portion of neuroleukin and the AIDS virus share the same chemical makeup.

The portion of shared identity between the nerve-growth promoter and the deadly virus is very small, Gurney said, about 44 amino acids in a section that totals 560. But this slight area of high structural similarity, which scientists call homology, could be very significant, he said.

Gurney and his colleagues discovered neuroleukin last fall, and they were intrigued because the substance, vital for some nerve cells, also had a connection with the body's immune system. It is produced by some immune cells when they are activated to fight invading infection, but not otherwise.

This unusual combination of brain and immune activities made the researchers think of the AIDS virus, called HIV for human immunodeficiency virus, because it also is known to interact with brain cells and with the immune system.

The loss of brain and nerve function, called dementia, associated with HIV infection diffs from many other forms of dementia, Gurney said.

Dementia often is the result of the death of nerve cells and is irreversible, he said, but the AIDS-related dementia seems to be reversible. Drugs that inhibit reproduction of HIV have accompanied a return of normal brain function, he said.

These results in humans undergoing AIDS therapy suggest that the virus may be inhibiting the work of neuroleukins. When the numbers of virus are reduced, neuroleukin function resumes and dementia symptoms subside.

The lab work reported in Science supports this theory of how HIV may impair brain and nerve functions.

Gurney worked with David Ho of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and UCLA and Mark Lee, formerly of the University of Chicago and now of Temple University in Philadelphia.

Gurney said that the next step will be to focus on the small portion of the AIDS virus that strongly resembles neuroleukin to see if its activity is vital to the ability of the virus to infect cells.

In another development, researchers reported in the British journal Lancet that they have found a new treatment for a type of pneumonia that has become the most common infection among AIDS patients.

The therapy uses an aerosol form of the common drug pentamidine to treat patients with pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, which strikes at least 60 percent of AIDS victims, according to researchers at the University of California at San Francisco.

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