Some additional perspective on yesterday’s story.

About a month ago, I remember reading an article in either Time or Newsweek magazine that dealt with the issue of the average life expectancy of humans around the world. In the list that they compiled of the over 200 or so countries on earth, I remember admiring the small country of Macau in southeast Asia for maintaining a life expectancy of nearly 85 years in this increasingly fast-food reliant and dangerous world. I then remember slowly scrolling down the list, taking note of the spot of many countries I have visited or would like to visit in the future and finally reaching my way down to the absolute bottom of the list: Swaziland, Africa; Average Life Expectancy: 32.23 years.

As I’m sure many of you are shocked and horrified at this ludicrously low number, let me reaffirm that this is not a typo. Although heart-aching, this forces us to contemplate the facts that every Swazi man, woman, and child must deal with every day of their lives: the average male in Swaziland lives just 31.84 years while the average female lives merely 32.62 years. Being a 20 year old male approaching my 21st birthday in about five months, the mere thought that I would have no more than 10 years left on this earth if I was born in Swaziland is a one that I wish I didn’t have to contemplate daily. Like most countries of Sub-Saharan Africa where the life expectancy remains well below the average of similarly developed areas around the world, Swaziland too attributes its especially low average life expectancy to the killer HIV virus. A recent development at the University of California-Los Angeles AIDS Institute; however, gives us some reason to be hopeful about the future demise of this frightening disease.

As Immune cells age, they lose their ability to divide properly because a part of their chromosome known as the telomere becomes shorter and shorter after each successive cell division. Being the primary “troops” of the Human body to ward off infection, this characteristic of immune cells entails that as they age, their disease fighting ability too is weakened. The main implication that can be taken from this is that in order to successfully fight infection, a tremendous amount of cell division must occur. An interesting fact to be additionally noted is that when actively fighting against invaders of the body such as viruses, immune cells can activate an enzyme known as telomerase that prevents the telomeres from shortening. With normal viruses that are often defeated by the body within days, such a mechanism works wonders; however, with viruses such as HIV that are never fully eliminated from the body, immune cells cannot keep telomerase activated forever so telomeres eventually shorten until division can no longer occur.

A research team at UCLA recently discovered that a chemical known as TAT2 naturally found in the plant Astragalus membranaceus has the ability to prevent or slow the progressive telomere shortening that occurs to the immune cells of an HIV/AIDS patient. The research team collectively wrote in this months edition of the Journal of Immunology, “The ability to enhance telomerase activity and antiviral functions of CD8 T-lymphocytes suggests that this strategy could be useful in treating HIV disease, as well as immunodeficiency and increased susceptibility to other viral infections associated with chronic diseases or aging”.

Hopefully this valuable research and more like it will eventually help rid our world of the ruthless HIV virus once and for all. We can only hope that one day the children of Swaziland and countless more like them in Sub-Saharan Africa and other regions of the world suffering from this global pandemic can have something a little more bright to look forward to for their future.

Question: Given your knowledge of viruses, what do you think makes HIV different from other, much less threatening and much more common viruses such as the common cold?

News Story Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081110090619.htm
Scientific Article Link: http://www.jimmunol.org/cgi/content/full/181/10/7400