How Your Little "Control" Of HIV Without Drugs?

Small change in an "alarm" protein that responds to infection may explain why some people with HIV can control their condition without drugs.

About one in 300 people with HIV are "controllers" and scientists want to replicate the way their bodies behave.Writing in Science, researchers from the U.S. say that differences in five amino acids in a protein called HLA-B is the key.

But UK experts said it was still "long way" to do before a new drug or vaccine HIV could developed.HIV "controllers" have been identified almost 20 years ago. You can suppress viral replication of the immune system, maintain a very low viral load without antiretroviral drugs.

We knew that some genes involved in the HLA system is important in the fight against HIV. But scientists have not identified genes that are involved or how they acted.

The researchers conducted the study of genome-wide association to collect almost 1,000 air traffic controllers, and 2600 people in progressive HIV infection.

Almost 300 items were associated with immune control of HIV, while in regions of chromosome six that encode the HLA proteins.

The researchers were able to detect some amino acids and identification of five HLA-B proteins play a central role. HLA-B is part of the process in which the immune system to recognize and destroy virus-infected cells.

A portion of the protein is called a binding pocket "drag and drop" peptides inside the virus in cell membrane.These mark cells for destruction by the CD8 "killer" T in the immune system.

The five amino acids identified by researchers in the binding pocket. Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University have done the work.