WSU BIOL209 Microbiology

The nanoparticles could be injected intravenously and, in theory, would be able to clear HIV from the blood stream

Infectious disease specialist Dr. Brad Spellberg, of the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, likens the situation to the Titanic's ill-fated voyage. "We're not talking about an iceberg that's down the line," he says. "The ship has hit the iceberg. We're taking on water. We already have people dying. Not only of CRE, but of untreatable CRE."

"If CRE spreads out of hospitals and into communities, that's when the ship is totally underwater and we all drown," Spellberg says.

the CDC reviewed six steps that they first published last year in a CRE Toolkit and want health care facilities to take:

But an important point is that none of this is required, and none of this is funded.

There are no reimbursements, under Medicare, for infection-control as a hospital task

Dr. Gay contacted Dr. Katherine Luzuriaga, an immunologist at the University of Massachusetts,

Dr. Steven Deeks, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said if the reservoir never established itself, then he would not call it a true cure, though this was somewhat a matter of semantics. “Was there enough time for a latent reservoir, the true barrier to cure, to establish itself?” he said.

One hypothesis is that the drugs killed off the virus before it could establish a hidden reservoir in the baby.

They found tiny amounts of some viral genetic material but no virus able to replicate, even lying dormant in so-called reservoirs in the body.

“For pediatrics, this is our Timothy Brown,” said Dr. Deborah Persaud, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and lead author of the report on the baby. “It’s proof of principle that we can cure H.I.V. infection if we can replicate this case.”

Dr. Hannah B. Gay, an associate professor of pediatrics,

The results have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

The baby, born in rural Mississippi, was treated aggressively with antiretroviral drugs starting around 30 hours after birth, something that is not usually done. If further study shows this works in other babies, it will almost certainly be recommended globally.

those reports and this new one could suggest there is something different about babies’ immune systems, said Dr. Joseph McCune of the University of California, San Francisco.

the results could lead to a new protocol for quickly testing and treating infants.

The bacteria hold onto an invading virus’s DNA, so that they are now prepared for a fresh attack. And over time, bacteria can build up little libraries of these virus barcodes. 

Last year, scientists at Indiana University surveyed the bacteria in people’s mouths and discovered 8,000 different viral barcodes–many of them corresponding to viruses scientists have yet to discover.

But if you build up a healthy store of antibodies to various strains of flu, smallpox, and other diseases, all that knowledge dies with you.

Not so for bacteria. When a microbe reproduces, it passes down its CRISPR genes and all of their viral barcodes to its descendants–including the ones it acquired in its own lifetime.

Last fall, for example, University of Cambridge scientists discovered viruses that carry an antidote for the suicide toxin made by their hosts. When the bacteria want to die, the virus forces them to live on. And just last month, University of Toronto scientists even discovered anti-CRISPR genes in viruses, which the viruses use to shut down the production of virus-killing molecules.

the scientists demonstrated that the ICP1 virus uses its CRISPR immune system to attack its host’s virus-attacking genes.