What Activates AIDS?
The body's immune reaction to HIV is a double-edged sword
More than 2 decades after researchers identified the virus that causes AIDS, they’re still struggling to understand it. How does it so successfully co-opt a person’s immune system? Why do some people infected with the virus develop AIDS quickly and others not at all? Answers remain slow in coming, at least in part because the course of the infection can’t be predicted by any single attribute of a person’s immune system or the causative agent–the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV. Recently, however, researchers have suggested that a natural process called immune activation may determine why infection with HIV progresses differently in different people.
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Immune activation occurs whenever immune system cells detect foreign invaders and send out chemical signals to draw other cells into the fight. It occurs at the beginning of any infection and, in the case of HIV, seems to remain engaged throughout. Researchers speculate that HIV turns this normally beneficial response to bad effect.