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nope - the test contains antibodies to HIV proteins, but nothing from HIV itself. The 'antigen test' tests for antigens, it doesn't itself contain any antigens. Antibodies are proteins that animals (like humans) produce to fight of viral and bacterial infections, they don't come from viruses. Even if the test did contain HIV proteins, it could not ...

Alright, having read the citation linked, and doing a little poking of my own, here's my approach at an answer: Some human herpes virus infections may compete with HIV infection. Essentially, some strains (not the ones you normally think of) infect CD4 cells - the same cells targeted by HIV. These strains down regulate transcription in CD4 cells, which in ...

Western Blot tests on young children are practically useless, since they test for antibodies. The child will likely have antibodies passed down by the HIV+ mother, regardless of whether the child has HIV. The test will show the antibodies, which may be mistaken for an active immune response from the child. As such, there will be a high false-positive rate ...

Since early March we know, that there is the first patient which has been cured by HAART. According to the paper it has been proven that the infant was infected with HIV. This was done by detecting the virus even after the first 48 hours, this rules out that the virus transmitted by the mother without infection. The infant was first treated when it was 30 ...

Q1: Partially. T cells are important for the immune response through pathways other than cytokine release. Being activated by contact with another immune cell presenting their corresponding antigen, T cells proliferate and themselves activate their compatible B cell counterpart. These then produce antibodies specific to that antigen, the basis of the ...

While it's difficult to prove a negative, I know of no cases where a patient has been treated with HAART to the extent that their viral load never rises again. Keep in mind that, if nothing else, such a study would be extremely hard to do, as proving you've "cured" someone would require extremely long term followup. HAART is however quite good at ...

No, the protein components of viruses may be able to initiate the infectious process, i.e. injection, but if there is no RNA or DNA, there is no virus to inject into the target cell. Hence none of the viral genome's action such as replication or transcription will occur and the cell itself will remain unchanged. However, some effects of viral infection are ...

I am afraid your question is really not clear. You are asking one thing in the title of your question, another in the question body and a third in your comments. If you are asking (as you did in your comment above) what would happen if a virus with no enzymes were to infect a cell, see below. In the case of HIV (and other retroviruses) some of the most ...

There are two main components of the immune system that are involved: Antibodies and T-cells. T-cells are responsible for activating white blood cells to help fight off infection. These are the cells the HIV infects. Antibodies bond to the HIV virus and try to neutralize them before they can infect more cells. Unfortunately as the HIV virus replicates, ...

You have to design your primers properly. Usually, in real-time PCR, you don't choose a very long product. Ideal product size is 150-300. Next, see what your NRTI is analogous to. For e.g. if I am using AZT (Azathymidie), I would place my reverse primer at or after the last T. There are alternate techniques as well. You can use primer extension ...

yes [Purely my guess] : I think it will be difficult when simultaneously several infections pop up. There is no antigen presentation (as there is no receiver); it will be difficult to manually deliver different kinds of responses by cytokine injection. Moreover most cytokines are paracrine i.e they act locally; injecting them would cause a systemic ...

The one that actually makes me skeptical of the use of this is that this "cure" was primarily a massive dose of antiretrovirals used as catchup therapy because the infant's mother didn't have access to prophylactic treatments while she was pregnant and delivering. Basically, it's a cure that requires you to have access to antivirals very, very near the ...

For an understandable explanation: The human body can defend against HIV - hence why an HIV infection does not immediately develop AIDS, and in fact for a long time the virus cannot be detected in blood. This is because the immune response is keeping them down, but slowly the virus works its way through the cells, proliferates and kills more and more T ...