HIV evolving 'into milder form'
m.bbc.co.uk
HIV evolving 'into milder form'
1–10 of 71 posts
Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'
#2I wonder if infecting a person with AIDS with milder form of HIV will make them better.
Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'
#3That's pretty typical for parasites (which include viruses).
Killing your host is never a good idea, the best parasites cause minimal disruption to their host.
All animals and humans are infected with countless parasites, but you never notice. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_mite (don't scratch).
Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'
#4I wonder if infecting a person with AIDS with milder form of HIV will make them better.
That would imply that HIV viruses compete with each other, and this competition is able to suppress each other.
This is typical with bacteria, but I don't think it happens with viruses.
Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'
#5I wonder if infecting a person with AIDS with milder form of HIV will make them better.
> wonder if infecting a person with AIDS with milder form of HIV will make them better
Basically, no. Based on current experience it seems that it would not improve matters and may make them worse.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1169464/
Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'
#6What viruses "want" is to reproduce. Killing you is an unfortunate unplanned side effect.
If only we could negotiate and agree to allow them to reproduce and not kill us, we'd all get along much better.
Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'
#7I wonder if infecting a person with AIDS with milder form of HIV will make them better.
HIV rewrites how the immune system works. Doing it again more mildly will not improve the situation.
Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'
#8What viruses "want" is to reproduce. Killing you is an unfortunate unplanned side effect. If only we could negotiate and agree to allow them to reproduce and not kill us, we'd all get along much better.
Epstein-Barr virus is close to that ideal, 90-95% of adults have it. Unfortunately, it's connected with cancers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epstein%E2%80%93Barr_virus
Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'
#9What viruses "want" is to reproduce. Killing you is an unfortunate unplanned side effect. If only we could negotiate and agree to allow them to reproduce and not kill us, we'd all get along much better.
Epstein-Barr virus is close to that ideal, 90-95% of adults have it. Unfortunately, it's connected with cancers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epstein%E2%80%93Barr_virus
90-95% of adults had it at some point. Most people develop immunity to it and so it doesn't survive in them.
I'd say the most successful virus in humans would be the common cold, given how frequently we seem to get it, although it's more of a massive family of virii.
Re: HIV evolving 'into milder form'
#10What viruses "want" is to reproduce. Killing you is an unfortunate unplanned side effect. If only we could negotiate and agree to allow them to reproduce and not kill us, we'd all get along much better.