Barrier to autoimmune disease may open door to HIV
Some patients infected with HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS, develop "broadly neutralizing antibodies" (bnAbs) that can protect against a wide variety of HIV-1 strains by recognizing a protein on the surface of the virus called Env. But the patients only develop these antibodies after many years of infection. Researchers are keen to discover how such bnAbs can be induced quickly in response to vaccinations against HIV-1. bnAbs have several unusual features, including the fact that some of them often also recognize some of the body's own proteins. HIV-1-infected individuals may therefore take a long time to develop these antibodies because their production is suppressed by some of the mechanisms that prevent the body from generating self-reactive antibodies that could target healthy tissues and cause autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Patients with SLE show lower rates of HIV-1 infection, possibly because they produce self-reactive antibo...