Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: Spannerman on 02/11/2010 14:58:04
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Would it be possible to remove HIV/AIDs from the system using a clean room and immunosuppressant type drugs?
Could you give an AIDS patient immunosuppressant type drugs, which would completely destroy the immune system and all the white blood cells, thus destroying the HIV/AIDs. Following this one could then begin to rebuild the immune system with vaccines. All of this would occur in a clean room to prevent any infections, virus', or bacteria from entering the vulnerable system.
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A room may be made "clean" and free of any micro-organisms but the person can't.
People are host to many types of micro-organisms, viruses, bacteria, fungi, which could run riot if the person's immune system was switched off.
e.g. herpes simplex virus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herpes_simplex_virus), (which most of the population is host to), can be fatal in immune compromised patients (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15901133).
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Okay, that I understand. However, if it were possible to completely eliminate all sources of infection, would this work?
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Spannerman:
I think this is one of those straightforward ideas that would be impossible to do with current technology. The immune system contains a large variety of cells including many that have other important duties. Macrophages and related cells, for example, are known to harbor dormant HIV for long periods of time, and are also required for disposing of worn out cells and have general clean up duties.
Another problem is how would one kill off all of the immune cells and how would they be replaced? I think that by the time that biomedical science has figured out how to do this the technology for killing off all the HIV in a body will be well known.
Steve
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The human body is a good 55~65% pathogens, parasites, and symbiotes that keep eachother in check and are keep in check by the immune system.
The body needs all this to function properly.