Newsday - May 21, 1992
Laurie Garrett
Sensitive new technology has revealed that the AIDS virus hides in 100,000 times more cells inside an infected individual than previously thought, a finding that helps explain why the virus is so devastating.
Ever since the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, was discovered in 1984 scientists have wondered how a virus that seemed to infect very few cells - perhaps fewer than .001 percent of all white blood cells - was able to cause such damage.
Today researchers from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia will report that improved technology can detect the virus in far more white blood cells, and demonstrates that the number of cells infected increases as the patient's illness worsens.
Using a newly developed, patented technique, the researchers found the virus hidden inside the genetic material of living human cells - a feat previously considered impossible. And, they have shown that up to 13 percent of the white blood cells in people with AIDS are infected with hidden HIV.
That is more than enough, chief researcher Dr. Roger Pomerantz said, to explain HIV's role in the destruction of a person's immune system, and subsequent development of AIDS. His group's technique, which involves the use of polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, technology inside whole living cells, is described in today's New England Journal of Medicine.
Pomerantz's group has already used the technique to find HIV-infected cells in babies born to infected mothers, and hopes to use it to screen potential treatments for AIDS. The technique should be able to pinpoint which - if any - drugs can attack HIV when it is hidden inside a cell's genetic material.
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