Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2003. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Newsday - February 14, 2003
Laurie Garrett, Staff Correspondent
Though the discovery of the virus, called GBV-C, was made in 1996, and some scientists offered evidence of its relationship with HIV a year ago, several researchers presented strong evidence yesterday for the association as well as a biological explanation for how it works.
A few went so far as to suggest that the virus ought to be injected into HIV patients in an effort to forestall the onset of AIDS and death.
The 10th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections heard the results of a four-year study of 230 HIV-positive Swedes. At diagnosis, 57 percent had blood tests showing the presence of either GBV-C viruses or antibodies, the latter indicating the virus had been present. Four years later, those who still had GBV-C were far less likely to have developed AIDS or to have died, and 14 whose blood was now clear of the virus rapidly progressed to AIDS or death, said Dr. Peiter Bjorkman of the University of Malmo in Sweden.
Dr. Carolyn Williams, with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, presented similar findings based on a study of 271 HIV-positive American men. Williams tested blood samples drawn in 1990 and 1995, before the current anti-HIV medicines were available. By 1995, all but 137 were either too sick to be tested or had died of AIDS. Among the 137, 40 percent had GBV-C in their blood.
"We estimated 10-year survival odds to be 75 percent for men who were infected with GBV-C originally and remained infected for 10 years," Williams said. "Survival odds were 39 percent for those who never were infected with GBV-C. And those who were originally infected and then cleared the virus [from their bloodstream] had the worst outcome, 16 percent survival odds."
A French research team presented similar results of a two-year study.
Dr. Jack Stapleton of the Iowa City Veterans Affairs Medical Center discovered that the virus works by inducing a series of chemical changes in the cells it infects, removing certain molecules from their surface.
It is those surface molecules that HIV uses as doorknobs to gain entry to the cells. Without them, HIV cannot get inside, which means it cannot survive or multiply.
Stapleton and his colleague Dr. Sarah George discovered that when they grew GBV-C in human white blood cells in a lab culture and later added HIV, the AIDS virus couldn't grow. If they put enough GBV-C into the cell cultures, Stapleton told the conference, HIV growth was blocked completely. Conversely, when the GBV-C level was lowered, the AIDS virus production went up.
Stapleton said use of the virus as therapy "is being considered. We're weighing the ethics, safety. The NIH [National Institutes of Health] is concerned -- they don't want to intentionally infect people with any virus."
Stapleton said GBV-C is commonplace and is not even screened out of the nation's blood supply; it's found in about 1.8 percent of healthy blood donors. George estimated that 300 units of GBV-C contaminated blood are transfused daily in the United States, with no apparent harm.
Despite rigorous testing, no human illnesses have been connected to the virus.
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