Discovering where HIV persists in spite of treatment
HIV antiviral therapy lets infected people live relatively healthy lives for many years, but the virus doesn’t go away completely. If treatment stops, the virus multiplies again from hidden reservoirs in the body. Now, investigators from the Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard may have found HIV’s viral hiding place — in a small group of recently identified T cells with stem cell-like properties. “Most human cells are short-lived, so it has been unclear how HIV manages to stick around for decades in spite of very effective antiviral treatment,” said Mathias Lichterfeld of the MGH Infectious Disease Division, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and corresponding author of a report on the findings receiving advance online publication in Nature Medicine. Though HIV normally attacks immune system cells called T cells, those cells are short-lived. The virus’ ability to survive years of therapy caused...