So this is why lesbians don't get AIDS

Mayabird · Post by **Mayabird** » 2008-02-01 01:15am

Not that I'm turning lesbian, mind you...

Researchers make startling HIV discovery

January 28 2008 at 12:47PM

Hamburg - Researchers in Germany have discovered that a protein found in semen makes HIV 100 000 times more virulent than it is alone - thus helping to explain why more than 80 per cent of human-immunodeficiency-virus (HIV) infections are transmitted via sexual intercourse.

The team of German scientists had initially set out to determine whether semen contained factors that inhibit the HIV infection, according to the report published in the journal Cell.

But surprisingly, the HIV and AIDS researchers in Hanover and Ulm, Germany, found that fragments of prosthetic acidic phosphatase isolated from human semen form tiny fibres known as amyloid fibrils.

Those fibrils capture HIV particles and help them to penetrate target cells, thereby increasing the infection rate by up to several orders of magnitude.

"We were not expecting to find an enhancer, and we were even more surprised about the strength," says report co-author Frank Kirchhoff, a virologist at the University of Ulm Clinic in Germany.

"Most enhancers have maybe a two- or three-fold effect, but here the effect was amazing. More than 50-fold and, under certain conditions, more than 100 000-fold," Kirchhoff says.

Wolf-Georg Forssmann of VIRO PharmaCeuticals, GmbH & Co, KG, and Hanover Medical School says the fibrils act like a ferry, picking up the viruses and then bringing them to the cell.

Researchers injected both the naked virus and SEVI-treated HIV into the tails of rats that had been given human immune system cells.

The HIV with the semen component was five times more effective at transmitting the virus.

The fibrils act like a ferry
In situations where low levels of the virus are transferred - as during intercourse - Kirchhoff says, SEVI can make HIV up to 100 000 times more likely to spread when compared with the virus alone.

In an editorial accompanying the article, postdoctoral fellow Nadia Roan, along with Warner Greene, a senior investigator at the University of California, San Francisco's Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology, writes:

"If SEVI truly increases the real-world heterosexual spread of HIV by several orders of magnitude, then negating the activity of this factor could conceivably diminish these frequencies to levels that might virtually eliminate semen-driven HIV transmission."

HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS, has infected 60 million people worldwide (causing 25 million deaths) since it was discovered in humans in 1981.

The transmission rate from intravaginal sexual intercourse is estimated at one in every 200 to 2 000 acts. In Africa, 60 per cent of new infections are in women who have had sex with HIV-positive men. - Sapa-dpa

This does explain a lot

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2008-02-01 01:37am

It's like HIV evolved to specifically prey on human reproductive actions.

Adrian Laguna · Post by **Adrian Laguna** » 2008-02-01 01:39am

So the secret to HIV's success is that it found something in semen it can latch on and ride to new hosts. Clever little bug.

Post by **K. A. Pital** » 2008-02-01 01:57am

Wow.

Well, good for lesbians.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2008-02-01 03:51am

Mayabird wrote:Not that I'm turning lesbian, mind you...

You certainly had better not be...

speaker-to-trolls · Post by **speaker-to-trolls** » 2008-02-01 08:48am

Shinova wrote:It's like HIV evolved to specifically prey on human reproductive actions.

I wonder if it does the same thing with monkey semen, if it does then this isn't really surprising, if it doesn't then this is very strange.

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2008-02-01 10:29am

speaker-to-trolls wrote:
Shinova wrote:It's like HIV evolved to specifically prey on human reproductive actions.
I wonder if it does the same thing with monkey semen, if it does then this isn't really surprising, if it doesn't then this is very strange.

How is it strange? It has one of the fastest mutation rates of any virus, in just 20 years it has diverged into six different taxonomic groups, each one specializing on a different type of transmission.

Hitching a ride on semen is hardly surprising.

Molyneux · Post by **Molyneux** » 2008-02-01 10:36am

Fucking superbug. Any chance this could be neutralized by some kind of fancy chemistry trick?

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2008-02-01 10:44am

Molyneux wrote:Fucking superbug. Any chance this could be neutralized by some kind of fancy chemistry trick?

The cum-riding sure... might make reproduction difficult though.

as for HIV itself, people talk about a cure or vaccine and i start laughing...

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2008-02-01 11:25am

Alyrium Denryle wrote:
Molyneux wrote:Fucking superbug. Any chance this could be neutralized by some kind of fancy chemistry trick?
The cum-riding sure... might make reproduction difficult though.

Sounds good to me. That would help Africa out a lot.

Darth Lucifer · Post by **Darth Lucifer** » 2008-02-01 06:16pm

Alyrium Denryle wrote:
Molyneux wrote:Fucking superbug. Any chance this could be neutralized by some kind of fancy chemistry trick?
The cum-riding sure... might make reproduction difficult though.

as for HIV itself, people talk about a cure or vaccine and i start laughing...

Someone once told me that finding a cure for HIV would be as hard as finding a cure for the common cold.

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2008-02-01 07:23pm

Harder.

The Spartan · Post by **The Spartan** » 2008-02-01 07:53pm

I can understand laughing at the cure but why the vaccine? Is it because of the multitude of strains and the continued evolution into more?

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-02-01 08:03pm

The Spartan wrote:I can understand laughing at the cure but why the vaccine? Is it because of the multitude of strains and the continued evolution into more?

Yes. You'd practically need a new vaccine every week. Even if you had the trillions that would need for development and distribution, there's not the time for proper GCP trials on humans.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2008-02-01 08:09pm

Exactly how much different is the exchange in body fluid in lesbian sex than heterosexual or gay intercourse?

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2008-02-01 08:17pm

Darth Servo wrote:Exactly how much different is the exchange in body fluid in lesbian sex than heterosexual or gay intercourse?

It lacks the enabling protein described in the article, duh.

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2008-02-01 08:23pm

Darth Servo wrote:Exactly how much different is the exchange in body fluid in lesbian sex than heterosexual or gay intercourse?

Women tend not to have semen on account of not having to shoot sperm at their partners, and also tending not to have prostate glands where seminal fluid is produced.

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2008-02-01 08:27pm

Zuul wrote:
Darth Servo wrote:Exactly how much different is the exchange in body fluid in lesbian sex than heterosexual or gay intercourse?
Women tend not to have semen on account of not having to shoot sperm at their partners, and also tending not to have prostate glands where seminal fluid is produced.

Also, Servo: If your girlfriend possesses those traits, you might be dating Zuul.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2008-02-01 08:38pm

I didn't say women did have semen. I said "body fluids" and semen is hardly the only one involved in sex.

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2008-02-01 09:24pm

Darth Servo wrote:I didn't say women did have semen. I said "body fluids" and semen is hardly the only one involved in sex.

You did ask what the differences are in fluid exchange, and semen is a pretty important one in the ol' boy on boy and boy on girl but not girl on girl. It's also the one mentioned right at the top of the thread. And is in bold. And is like the most obvious thing ever.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2008-02-01 10:31pm

OK, allow me to clarify. "Conventional wisdom" has believed the reason lesbians didn't transmit HIV to each other was due to a significantly lower amount of fluid transmitted during sexual relations. Does this new discovery completely account for the lower transmission rate or is there still room for the "lower fluid" theory in the model?

Wyrm · Post by **Wyrm** » 2008-02-01 11:20pm

Any cure would have to attack the human side of the equation, which evolves much more slowly. Probably by whacking the CD4 protein.

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2008-02-01 11:21pm

The lack of the protein reduces your chance of infection by two orders of magnitude and some change, at minimum. That is irrelevant to the issue of fluid exchange; the two together probably just make it really hard to get HIV in lesbian sex.

Molyneux · Post by **Molyneux** » 2008-02-01 11:33pm

Wyrm wrote:Any cure would have to attack the human side of the equation, which evolves much more slowly. Probably by whacking the CD4 protein.

How about whacking people in the head until they a) wear condoms, or b) stop having sex and decide to just rot quietly for awhile?

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2008-02-01 11:53pm

Molyneux wrote:How about whacking people in the head until they a) wear condoms, or b) stop having sex and decide to just rot quietly for awhile?

I nominate you to begin the whacking.

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So this is why lesbians don't get AIDS

So this is why lesbians don't get AIDS

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