Benefits Of AIDS Research Not Limited To One Disease
Article by Allen Reese
Special to The Desert Sun
July 17, 2005
Remarkable progress has been made in recent years in our understanding of the causes and treatments for a wide variety of diseases. The potential opportunities offered by these scientific findings may hold the promise of a cure for heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's disease and more.
We are fortunate to live in a time when the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has made the astute decision to fund AIDS research into new drugs, treatments and prevention. It may not be widely known that this very research is also benefiting many other diseases.
According to an article published by amfAR (American Foundation for AIDS Research) in July 2005 titled, "The Broad Benefits of AIDS Research: An Update," by Jeffrey Laurence, M.D., "It (AIDS research) has already led to a new drug for hepatitis B, the leading cause of liver cancer worldwide; for hepatitis C, a rapidly emerging, additional cause of chronic liver disease; and possibly for liver cancer. And it promises a great deal more."
In his article, Dr. Laurence quotes "Cancer and AIDS," published in The Scientist by A.J.S. Rayle, noting that "HIV/AIDS research has blazed trails empirically, politically, and even philosophically. Since this disease took hold new insights and understanding in immunology, antiviral research, vaccine development and gene therapy have emerged from HIV/AIDS research laboratories and crossed over to cancer research," as well as to many other fields.
In addition to hepatitis, AIDS research has benefited breast cancer, autoimmune diseases, Alzheimer's and heart disease:
According to Dr. Laurence, one promising experimental therapy for advanced breast cancer is high-dose chemotherapy, followed by a bone-marrow transplant, which may lead to devastating, even fatal, opportunistic infections.
These conditions are common in AIDS too, and new drugs against these infections have come directly from AIDS-targeted research. Treatment for Kaposi's sarcoma is also being tested in bladder, vulvular and colon cancers.
HIV-positive individuals often develop evidence of an autoimmune problem, such as a lupus-like blood abnormality. Treatments developed in the context of AIDS, Dr. Laurence states, should be directly applicable to the same conditions when they occur spontaneously.
As with Alzheimer's disease, profound dementia is an important component of AIDS in its late stages. Dr. Laurence notes that HIV can cause dementia through a process of cell injury or programmed cell death. Drugs that are successful in improving nerve damage and dementia in AIDS may have similar effects in Alzheimer's. The characteristic plaques that fill the brain cells of Alzheimer's patients are formed partly by proteases - and so scientists are investigating the use of protease inhibitors, a widely prescribed family of AIDS drugs, to treat this debilitating dementia.
Similar to the cell damage in Alzheimer's disease, it appears that HIV infection injures the cells that line the small blood vessels of the heart. Dr. Laurence points out that this same injury occurs in HIV-negative people with atherosclerosis, where its origin is thought to be certain infections of the blood-vessel wall. Thus, the discovery of the means to block the cell damage process may not only benefit those with AIDS, but everyone.
Desert AIDS Project supports research in all fields of medicine, certainly not exclusively in HIV/AIDS. Sadly, there are no bounds to human suffering. Indeed, many AIDS patients, especially those who are fortunate enough to have lived into their retirement years, are afflicted with the same illnesses that HIV-negative individuals suffer from.
The hope for future generations lies in continuing medical research. Desert AIDS Project joins with the medical community at large to support funding decisions at the government level, with the hope that not just HIV/AIDS, but cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's and other illnesses, will be eradicated in our lifetime.
Allen Reese is chief executive officer of Desert AIDS Project in Palm Springs.