From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Sun Mar 02 1997 - 01:25:23 MST
pfallon@postoffice.ptd.net (Pat Fallon) writes:
>If HIV were actively
>infecting T-cells then cell-free virus particles, called virions, should be
>easily found circulating in the blood. This is the case with all classical
>viral diseases: Patients with Hepatitus B will have about 10 million free
>virus particles per milliliter of blood; Flu-like symptoms will appear only
>in the presence of 1 million rhinovirus particles per milliliter of nasal
>mucous. HIV, like other retroviruses, can achieve high levels of virus when
>first infecting the body (up to 100,000 particles per milliliter of blood),
>but in most people HIV is then permanently inactivated by the antibodies
>generated against it.
Pardon my rudeness, but you might not be making elementary errors if you had
any references less that 6 years old. It's been known for several years that
HIV is always present and highly active in the lymph nodes of infected
patients for the entire course of the disease. Antibodies do indeed clear it
from the blood and that's why it's not found in the the blood for a variable
period of several years between initial development of antibodies and
late-stage disease. However, antibodies just aren't fast enough to provide
100% protection from transmissions in the lymph nodes. HIV can also jump
directly from cell to cell in such a way that antibodies aren't very
effective.
>Slow pathogenicity by a neutralized virus has never been experimentally
>proven.
Ever heard of chronic hepatitis?
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