Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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United Press International; Wednesday January 28 6:26 PM EST
Mara Bovsun in New York
The investigators say this finding raises hopes for gene therapies that will successfully fight AIDS in humans, some of which are now being studied in the clinic.
In research reported in the February issue of the journal Nature Medicine, monkeys given the gene therapy maintained healthier immune systems and did not show symptoms of the disease after being infected with the virus, known as simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV).
The researchers, from the National Institutes of Health and Johns Hopkins Unviersity School of Medicine, say the monkeys also had fewer copies of SIV circulating in their blood.
The treatment involved first removing CD4 cells, the immune system cells that become infected with SIV, from the monkeys.
The scientists inserted a gene into these cells that binds up the mechanism that allows the virus to reproduce.
They then returned the gene-altered cells into the monkeys, and exposed the monkeys to SIV.
Dr. Robert Donahue, a senior investigator with the NIH's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute says, "We didn't prevent the animals from becoming infected."
But the treatment reduced the amount of virus in the monkeys' blood and kept them from getting sick.
Dr. Richard Morgan, another investigator on the study, says that there are currently about six human trials underway in the United States using this approach in fighting HIV.
Morgan, of the National Human Genome Research Institute, calls the success of the monkey trial "encouraging" and says that it shows that gene therapy may one day help people who are infected with the AIDS virus.
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