HIV Digest	HIV Digest Archive

The drug methamphetamine dramatically increases the ability of feline immunodeficiency virus, or FIV, to reproduce itself in a type of brain cell in cats, new research reveals. If the findings hold true in humans, they could help explain why AIDS progresses more rapidly in drug abusers.

Researchers set out to discover whether methamphetamine could boost the ability of FIV to infect particular brain cells called astrocytes. When they added FIV particles to a culture containing the cat cells, little infection took place. It was only when they added infected cat lymphocytes that the viruses made it into the astrocytes. That astrocytes were so resistant to infection suggests the viruses do not infect astrocytes directly, but instead are "handed off" from infected lymphocytes to astrocytes. "This is likely a way that the virus is transmitted to the brain," said Lawrence Mathes, a professor in the college of veterinary medicine at OSU and coauthor of the study.

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Addition of methamphetamine at levels similar to those found in a drug abuser's bloodstream caused the production of new viruses to jump by a factor of 10, the researchers reported. "This might be an explanation for what clinicians have been feeling all along but couldn't prove," said Elyse J. Singer, associate professor of neurology at the University of California- Los Angeles. "Dementia might be ameliorated or treated by taking patients off methamphetamine drugs," Singer said. "In our treatment of patients, we need to emphasize how really bad these things are for the brain."

Editor's Note: from the UPI