Women ‘weak’ in fighting off HIV

HIV spreads rapidly in women than in men with the same levels of HIV in the blood. And now a research team from the Massachusetts General Hospital, U.S. has found out the reason behind this phenomenon.

The team has discovered that a receptor molecule concerned with the first-line detection of HIV reacts in a different manner in women. These results might help in developing a treatment for AIDS or at least finding out ways that can help slow down its progression.

pDCs have an important role to play
The researchers tried finding out if gender dissimilarities in the immune system could provide a plausible explanation as to why HIV spreads quickly in the fairer sex.

They paid attention to the immune cells called plasmacytoid dendritic cells or pDCs. These cells are one of the first cells that identify HIV and then fight against it.

Experiments done in the laboratories revealed that a very high percentage of these cells from fit, uninfected women became active when confronted with HIV-1 in contrast to pDCs from healthy men.

After this, the research team analysed if the hormone levels of a woman could have any role to play.

It was found that pDCs in older women, who were already through with their menopause stage, almost showed the same mechanism as is there in men.
However, pre-menopausal women with elevated levels of progesterone showed higher activity of pDCs in reaction to HIV-1.

It was then tested whether this increased activation of pDCs led to a chain reaction and stimulated other immune cells too. These immune cells are also known as T cells.

An analysis of the blood of males and females showed that women indeed have increased levels of activated CD8-positive T cells than men with similar blood levels of HIV-1.

Lead researcher Dr. Marcus Altfeld, was quoted as saying, “While stronger activation of the immune system might be beneficial in the early stages of infection, resulting in lower levels of HIV-1 replication, persistent viral replication and stronger chronic immune activation can lead to the faster progression of Aids that has been seen in women.”

Further research to be done
Drugs that alter this mechanism need to be developed now. Elaborate studies are being conducted based on the results obtained from this research.

“This is an interesting piece of research exploring whether HIV progresses faster in women than in men,” Dr. Altfeld added.

“Whilst there are some genetic differences based on sex, access to treatment remains the single most important factor in preventing HIV from progressing to Aids,” said Jo Robinson from Terrence Higgins Trust.

The latest study findings have been published in Nature Medicine.