HIV Cure In The Works?

A recent news story on television caught my eye so when I saw this article I knew I had to do a blog about it. At a recent conference doctors stated that they have completely cured a child born with HIV. The child was born to a mother who had received no prenatal care and had no idea she was HIV positive. So when the child was born positive doctors administered the three anti-retroviral drug to the newborn in hopes of reversing the virus. After 18 months the mother stopped giving the child the medicine. The doctors expected the HIV to return but to their dismay it did not. They believed it worked because it hindered the virus before it was allowed time to make reservoirs in the child's body. Their next step is to see if they can repeat this process in other babies with this disease. 
Although this is super relevant to our society as much this discovery could possibly help much of the third world countries today. By having cure to this disease for children  it would ultimately lead to a cure for the adult version as well. The amount of people effected by this would detrimentally decrease and hopefully eradicate one of the biggest crisis' facing many nations today.
It is really important that this be proven to work multiple times and not just on this one child. By having it implemented on many children and work this would be one of the largest breakthrough's in science to probably ever come in our lifetime. I know that although it's not as prevalent in the US the amount of change it could to in just one country could turn things around for the better. 

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34593/title/Mississippi-Infant-Cured-of-HIV-/

Salt At Fault

I'll admit, I'm the first to stack a load of salt on just about everything I eat, so when I found this article about salt having extremely negative effects on the body I knew I had to do a blog about it. The article starts off talking about how being there has been new research done that proves high levels of salt intake can effect autoimmune disorders in a negative way. The research team based out of Harvard University found that the T helper cells which normally are good, are changed into pathogenic TH17 cells when exposed to salt. This TH17 cell apparently attacks the body's own good cells which can fight off sickness. The researchers took snapshots of the T helper cells as they were introduced to the salt, what they found is that not only do these cells turn into pathogenic TH17 cells but they also made the symptoms of the multiple sclerosis in mice worsen. Another study shown that humans whose diet consisted of more fast food than not had a higher level of TH17 in their blood. Although it can't be proven 100% yet, the researchers concluded that salt may have an effect of the pathogenic cells in the body. This is extremely  relevant to our time period, especially with the amounts of fast food being consumed. I know that living in the south salt is very easy to come by and literally gets put onto everything. I'm not talking just a little sprinkle either. It's always been known that large amounts of salt isn't good for your health but if ingesting salt weakens your immune system as well, the US could be in for some serious issues. 

It's important we understand the impact that the food we ingest has on our bodies. If we took the time adjust our diets accordingly we would seemingly have much healthier lives. If only the fast food companies could get on board and at least take the salt shakers and packets out of reach that would be a start at changing for the better. 

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34625/title/Salt-at-Fault-/

Natural STD Protection

After our discussion in class about the Gardasil shot in class and the effects of the HIV, I thought it would be interesting to read more about sexually transmitted diseases and what is being done in the medical field about it right now. This article starts off by telling us about an immune protein the female reproductive system known as interferon. It describes how most interferon proteins show up to fight off diseases and bacteria when they are present. However the specific type interferon-E is shown to be present even without the presence of the disease. Ultimately giving yield to an immune fighting protein being present all of the time. To support their theory than ran test on mice, and then on women to see during what times this protein was active. It was shown to fluctuate during specific time of the women's cycle but to almost be completely annihilated by menopause  resulting in the conclusion that this protein needs estrogen to survive and in the presence of progesterone will reduce back out. To prove that the interferon-E protein actually works to fight off herpes and chlamydia they infected mice with these diseases without the protein and the results showed that much worse cases of these diseases than mice were did have the interferon-I protein. The overall results seem to be highly appraised by the doctors although they were a little weary when it came to chlamydia because they would have liked to see it have more of an effect on the inflammation of the oviducts which can cause infertility in women.
This is extremely relate-able to the current young adult age. With findings like this there could ultimately be a decrease in the amount of people catching sexually transmitted diseases. With that, these findings could also lead into a direction which could help researchers not only treat these diseases but find cures for them as well. Whose to say there are not more proteins just like this one that could maybe one day cure cancer.
Understanding the body and how it works is the first step to finding a cure for the tragic diseases that takes the lives of ones we love everyday. It is rare to come across new discoveries that lead to certain preventative diseases. By obtaining more knowledge of these mysteries of the body we will not only be benefiting ourselves today but the future as well.

K.Y. Fung et al., “Interferon-ε protects the female reproductive tract from viral and bacterial infection,” Science, 399:1088-92, 2013.