HIV infection theory challenged
A longstanding theory of how HIV slowly depletes the body's capacity to fight infection is wrong, scientists say.
HIV attacks human immune cells, called T helper cells. Loss of these cells is gradual, often taking many years.
It was thought infected cells produced more HIV particles and that this caused the body to activate more T cells which in turn were infected and died.
Imperial College London modelling suggests that, if that was true, cells would die out in months not years.
The Imperial findings have been published in journal PLoS Medicine.
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