AIDS patients often suffer a form of dementia, losing their balance and memory, and having severe behavioural problems. Until now, this has mystified medical scientists. But now it seems that dementia may come about when HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, enters brain cells through a newly discovered surface receptor.
Usually, HIV attacks the lymphocytes of the immune system, binding specifically to receptors know as CD4 molecules. Neurons and other brain cells are not know to possess these receptors and so would seem to be safe.
But Yaffa Mizrachi and her colleagues at St Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital believe they have located a receptor which allows HIV to enter cells in the brain. The receptor is on the membrane of neurons and glial cells, the support cells of the brain. The researchers reported their results at the 20th annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in St Louis last week.
Until now, ...
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