arcticpenguin
Philosopher
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http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=570&ncid=753&e=1&u=/nm/20030214/sc_nm/aids_virus_dc
GBV-C, a harmless virus, may slow the advance of AIDS.
"We found that men who were persistently positive for GBV-C were 2.5 times more likely to survive," Williams told reporters.
They looked at blood taken from 271 HIV patients when they first visited a doctor. Eleven years later, 75 percent of the men who had persistent GBV-C infections were still alive against 39 percent of those who never were infected with GBV.
The mechanism for this is not clear, and ethical considerations will make it difficult to study. After all, you can't deliberately infect large numbers of people with a virus unless you're really, really sure that it's harmless.
GBV-C, a harmless virus, may slow the advance of AIDS.
"We found that men who were persistently positive for GBV-C were 2.5 times more likely to survive," Williams told reporters.
They looked at blood taken from 271 HIV patients when they first visited a doctor. Eleven years later, 75 percent of the men who had persistent GBV-C infections were still alive against 39 percent of those who never were infected with GBV.
The mechanism for this is not clear, and ethical considerations will make it difficult to study. After all, you can't deliberately infect large numbers of people with a virus unless you're really, really sure that it's harmless.