Cocaine use can make otherwise resistant immune cells susceptible to HIV

In many ways, the spread of HIV has been fueled by substance abuse. Shared needles and drug users' high-risk sexual behaviors are just some of the ways that narcotics such as cocaine have played a key role in the AIDS epidemic in much of the world.   There is, however, relatively little research into how drugs can impact the body's defenses against the virus. But a new UCLA study published in the October issue of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology examines how cocaine affects a unique population of immune cells called quiescent CD4 T cells, which are resistant to the virus that causes AIDS.   The results: Cocaine makes the cells susceptible to infection with HIV, causing both significant infection and new production of the virus.   "The surprising result was that the changes cocaine induced on these cells were very minimal, yet they were sufficient to fuel infection," said the study's senior author, Dimitrios Vatakis, an assistant professor of medicine in the division of hematology–oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "We found that cocaine mediates its effects directly, inducing minimal changes in the physiology of these cells and utilizing the same pathways it uses to target the brain."   For the yearlong in vitro study, the researchers collected blood from healthy human donors and isolated quiescent CD4 T cells. They exposed the cells to cocaine, then infected them with HIV. They harvested the samples over differen...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news