'Macrophages' key to HIV research

Immune cells called macrophages could hold the key to fighting HIV, new research has suggested.

Experts at the University of Florida (UF) and five other institutions have found that focusing drug development for HIV on macrophages may be more effective than concentrating on T cells, the traditional centre of HIV research.

Macrophages are present in diseased cells and their function is to "eat" invading disease agents.

Marco Salemi, co-lead author and assistant professor in the department of pathology, immunology and laboratory medicine at the UF College of Medicine, said that macrophages can be singled out as one area from which the HIV virus is coming from.

"Macrophages are these little factories producing new hybrid particles of the virus, making the virus probably even more aggressive over time," he stated.

"If we want to eradicate HIV we need to find a way to actually target the virus specifically infecting the macrophages."

The decline of T cells is usually thought of as the mark of developing HIV.

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