Word: virus
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...receptor that allows HIV to enter white blood cells; far fewer people carry that variant. In the lab, Weiss found that the African-specific receptor, called DARC, or duffy antigen receptor for chemokines, also interacted with HIV: the receptor binds to a wide array of proteins that suppress the virus's replication. Intrigued, but unable to explain why the lack of the receptor increased HIV infection, Weiss teamed up with geneticists at the University of Texas and elsewhere to analyze how the gene variant impacts HIV rates in real populations...
...Texas in Houston released a study in May showing that susceptibility to this perplexing, often debilitating disease tends to run in families. Shingles itself is not contagious, although exposure to it can trigger chicken pox in someone who has never had that infection; both are caused by the same virus. Approximately 1 in 3 chicken-pox veterans suffers a reactivation of the bug as an adult, as was the case with my patient in Michigan. Whether the virus, which can lie dormant for decades, resurfaces appears to depend on a lot of things: Age is a risk factor, since most...
...that front, at least, the British and American researchers may have good company. This week a separate team of researchers at the University of Texas announced they had found what may be the virus's "Achilles' heel" - a stretch of amino acids in the HIV envelope protein, which is necessary for the virus to attach to and infect host cells. Those amino acids, researchers say, could someday be a key therapeutic target and may help change the epidemic's course...
...that Firefox 3 will claim it. Other reasons for the mad rush: Firefox 3 is stable, meaning it hardly ever crashes. It's fast. You'll see performance differences on sites like Gmail. It's secure. Pop-up alerts tell you when you're visiting sites suspected of pushing virus-laden software or "phishing" scams--pretending to be, say, your bank, in an attempt to get account information. And with more than 5,000 add-ons to choose from, you can change everything about Firefox from the way it looks to how it behaves. Not a bad deal for free...
...theory is that by activating the virus, then preventing it from returning to hibernation, which is when researchers think it gains strength, it can be completely eradicated. Cullen believes that a drug could be developed to block the microRNA that suppress HSV-1 into latency; once it's active, acyclovir can be used to destroy the virus permanently. Cullen suggests that this new research may also eventually be applied to other latent viruses, such as herpes simplex virus-2 (HSV-2), which causes genital herpes, or the chicken pox virus, which causes shingles in adults. Cullen warns that some patients...