March 12, 2015

Full Body PET Scan Reveals Hiding Places Of HIV-Like Virus In Monkeys: Could New Technique Lead To HIV Cure?

What makes treating HIV particularly difficult is its ability to hide, allowing it to escape drugs and avoid detection by the immune system. Once a patient stops with their medication, the virus can get back into action and spread quickly throughout the body.  For the new study published in the journal Nature Methods on March 9, Francois Villinger from the Emory University in Atlanta and colleagues wanted to find out if PET scanning, which is used to reveal the spread of cancer, could also show the location of HIV in the body. They injected monkeys infected with SIV, the monkey’s version of HIV, with radioactive material that would only bind to SIV cells. {read more here}