A team of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Ragon Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and Harvard University have found thatthe special gene possessed by people who are naturally immune to the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), HLA B57, causes the body to manufacture a greater number of effective immune system cells. The discovery, published in the magazineNature, could help researchersdevelop vaccines that elicit the same response to the HIV virusthan that which individuals with this special gene generate themselves.
When people become infected with HIV, it is usually only a matter of time, unless prevented by drugs, before their bodies developpage. However, there is a small group of people who, exposed to this virus, develop the disease very slowly and even, in some cases, do not even develop it.
In the late 1990s, researchers showed that a high percentage of those people who were naturally immune to HIV, representing one in every 200 individuals, were carriers of a gene calledHLA B57. Now researchers, led by MIT professor Arup Chakraborty, have found thatthe HLA B57 gene causes the body to make more powerful and deadly T cells.
This effect contributes to these individuals having better control of HIV infection and other rapidly developing viruses, but it also has a negative side: it makes them patientsmore susceptible to autoimmune diseases, in which T lymphocytes attack the body’s own cells.
