The Man Who Beat HIV at Its Own Game for 30 Years

May 12, 2015 8:35 AM

But sometimes the evolving virus can unlock a response that holds HIV in check. Levy told Brothers he had a drop of luck in his blood. His white blood cells seemed to secrete tiny amounts of a substance that controls HIV. At the time, Brothers was only one of several hundred people, out of tens of millions with HIV, known to control HIV in this way. Levy believes an unidentified protein is responsible, and isolating and harnessing it might allow scientists to produce a revolutionary HIV treatment.

posted by ellieBOA (16 comments total)

Virtual Light is real? Damn.
posted by Yowser at 8:37 AM on May 12, 2015 [2 favorites]

The article mentions that there were people in Europe who were immune to the bubonic plague; but I actually saw something on PBS once that actually suggested that the plague immunity and HIV immunity were connected. As in, the handful of people who are functionally immune to HIV might be descendants of the lucky handful of people who were immune to the plague.

It was a tiny bit anecdotal - the special was focusing only on the genetic data from one single town in England, because it was isolated "enough" that there was an unusually low number of people who'd moved to the town over the past 500+ years, so it was possible to trace the genetics back far enough and compare them with the local written accounts of people surviving the plague and getting a credible "yeah, these people here are all descended from this one plague survivor and they all have this one gene" result. And at the very end they pulled up this one person who was resisting HIV and found that same gene in him.

So I don't know how definitive the connection is, but it leads the mind down interesting paths.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:57 AM on May 12, 2015 [7 favorites]

Given the hygiene and communal eating practices at the time of the Bubonic Plague I'd assume nearly everyone who lived through it must have some kind of immunity.
posted by srboisvert at 9:04 AM on May 12, 2015

"They see drugs interfering with evolution, which could spread defenses like Brothers’ antiviral protein throughout the human population. As Levy sees it, a gene that codes for an antiviral protein might hide in every person’s DNA, potentially waiting to be expressed and sent to battle against viruses.

Nowak’s research has shown that viruses like HIV can evolve rapidly. But the human immune system also evolves: After many generations, it can develop resilience to disease. When the bubonic plague devastated Europe, people with slight genetic advantages tended to survive, and over time the entire population of survivors evolved resistance against the plague."

Of course, if yours is the community that is devastated in the process of the evolution, you'd be taking the drugs too, evolutionary biologist or not. Also, bubonic plague killed about 100 million people. I'm quite sure, while the science itself is fascinating, no one is actually saying we let the disease process play out.
posted by Sophie1 at 9:04 AM on May 12, 2015

How in the hell do you make the choice (in this guy's case) of what to do?

"Okay, here's the story. You make a natural cure that keeps you from dying from HIV. We know it has kept you going this long. However, we don't know how long it will continue. However, if you take the dug course, it looks like it will kill off that natural cure."
posted by Samizdata at 9:06 AM on May 12, 2015

Evolution in action; He is ethically obligated to reproduce as much as possible for the good of all.
posted by Renoroc at 9:07 AM on May 12, 2015

Yes, the whole point of being human is that we've learned to surpass evolution. We don't need to evolve thick furry pelts to live in cold places, we don't need to evolve wings to fly, and we don't need to evolve immunity to smallpox to no longer suffer from smallpox.

I say stick to Plan A.
posted by Devonian at 9:07 AM on May 12, 2015 [4 favorites]

Here's what I would personally do (or advise my husband, who is HIV+ and on meds) do if he was this guy. The antiretroviral drugs are incredibly effective. I would keep being a research volunteer until my T cells got down to 250 or 300 or I started to get HIV-related illnesses like thrush. Then, it's all over. On the drugs, immediately. But that's just me.

I saw people who were quite literally on their death beds in 1996 come back to life and go on to get degrees and go back to work. Specifically, I have one dear friend who had MAC and CMV and a host of gastrointestinal bugs and wasting who started the drugs, went back to school, became a nurse and is now getting his Ph.D.
posted by Sophie1 at 9:15 AM on May 12, 2015 [12 favorites]

Controlling a virus like HIV with drug therapies is major medical progress, and few would deny its benefits. But some virologists and evolutionary biologists consider the potential long-term downside of drug treatments. They see drugs interfering with evolution, which could spread defenses like Brothers’ antiviral protein throughout the human population. As Levy sees it, a gene that codes for an antiviral protein might hide in every person’s DNA, potentially waiting to be expressed and sent to battle against viruses.

Reminds me of the recent news about the Measles jab as well. The more we learn, man, the more we learn.
posted by tilde at 9:17 AM on May 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty sure that the only way to kill Brothers is to cut off his head while shouting THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE.
posted by delfin at 9:27 AM on May 12, 2015 [2 favorites]

Re: the connection between the Black Death and HIV resistance among Europeans with CCR5 mutations.
posted by Sophie1 at 9:36 AM on May 12, 2015 [4 favorites]

Controlling a virus like HIV with drug therapies is major medical progress, and few would deny its benefits. But some virologists and evolutionary biologists consider the potential long-term downside of drug treatments. They see drugs interfering with evolution, which could spread defenses like Brothers’ antiviral protein throughout the human population. As Levy sees it, a gene that codes for an antiviral protein might hide in every person’s DNA, potentially waiting to be expressed and sent to battle against viruses.

THIS IS NOT SPARTA! [kicks some virologists and evolutionary biologists into a deep well]
posted by srboisvert at 10:03 AM on May 12, 2015 [3 favorites]

"Nowak’s research has shown that viruses like HIV can evolve rapidly. But the human immune system also evolves: After many generations, it can develop resilience to disease. When the bubonic plague devastated Europe, people with slight genetic advantages tended to survive, and over time the entire population of survivors evolved resistance against the plague."

So, basically it means that Adam and Eve scenarios where the entire current population has descended from couple of lucky individuals who could survive a deadly pathogen in their environment are pretty likely. Perhaps thats where the myth of Adam and Eve originated.

And I can understand not depending on evolution for protection against diseases but so far, best way of defeating/eradicating a disease is enabling the immune system to deal with it. Evolution or genetic modification is the most permanent way to improve our immune system. So, people who risk depending on their immune system alone to fight diseases are important. Hey! That means anti-vaxxers might have some use after all.
posted by TheLittlePrince at 1:07 PM on May 12, 2015

Reading it as someone who works in pharma I liked parts of the article for highlighting an avenue of research that really is relevant. And hated other chunks. First for the bizarre pre-HAART nostalgia that caught people's attention above. Second for this:

Levy’s persistence reflects the promise of an anti-HIV protein. Armed with such a substance, he says, “It would be relatively straightforward for a company to produce the protein for therapy, or a drug, that might induce cells in the body to produce it.”

There's this common assumption that everyone else's research is easy. We know lots of potential targets / proteins exactly and have been unable to convert them to therapies at all; the best case is like a decade of work and many billions of dollars. But other people do the work so it's "relatively straightforward."

@TheLittlePrince: Unfortunately I'd say the path to letting evolution improve the immune system is not best described as letting people with the right biochemistry do it on their own. It's letting the wrong people die. (There's also an issue that a response that's good against HIV specifically might be a response that's bad against some other virus. Viruses are evil and exploit every single pathway I can imagine and many more I can't.)
posted by mark k at 9:20 PM on May 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

Evolution is cool. And deadly. Wow.
posted by harriet vane at 5:14 AM on May 13, 2015

Armed with such a substance, he says, “It would be relatively straightforward for a company to produce the protein for therapy, or a drug, that might induce cells in the body to produce it.”

For some values of "straightforward".
posted by atrazine at 5:29 AM on May 13, 2015 [1 favorite]