• UCLA Health
  • myUCLAhealth
  • School of Medicine
UCLA Health

UCLA Health
  • About Us
    • What is UCLA Health?
    • Contact Us
    • Your Feedback
    • Accountable Care Organization
    • Awards & Achievements
    • Careers
    • Careers for Physicians
    • Departments - Administrative
    • Departments - Clinical
    • Giving to UCLA Health
    • In the Community
    • 340B Program
    • Industry Relations
    • Innovation
    • Leadership
    • News Releases
    • Price Transparency
    • Social Media
    Vital SignsLinked Graphic: Subscribe to Health Newsletters
    • Contact
    • Your Feedback
    • Accountable Care Organization
    • Awards and Achievements
    • Careers
    • Careers for Physicians
    • Departments - Administrative
    • Departments - Clinical
    • Giving to UCLA Health
    • Industry Relations
    • Innovation
    • In the Community
    • 340B Program
    • Leadership
    • News Releases
    • Price Transparency
    • Social Media
    • Subscribe to UCLA Health Newsletters
  • Conditions & Treatment
    • Health Library
    • Tests & Procedures
    • Drug Interaction Checker
    • Brain & Nervous System
    • Cancer
    • Children's Health
    • Heart Disease
    • Nutrition & Wellness
    • Pregnancy & Newborns
    • Orthopedics
    • Women's Health
    • Video Library
    • Cancer
    • Cardiovascular
    • Chiropractic
    • Cosmetic Surgery
    • Ear, Nose and Throat
    • Gastrointestinal
    • General Healthcare
    • Neurological
    • Obstetrics/Gynecology
    • See all videos...
    Symptom Checker
    • Video Library
  • Locations

    Hospitals

    • Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center
    • UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica
    • UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital
    • Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital
    • Institutes and Centers
    • Take a Virtual Tour

    Medical Offices/Clinics

    • Primary Care
    • Specialty Care
    • Immediate Care
    • Emergency Care
    • Outpatient Surgery Centers
    • Community Cancer Care
    • Pediatric Locations
    • Imaging/Radiology
    • Clinical Labs
    • Pharmacies

    Interactive Map

    interactive map

    • Locations Coming Soon
    • UCLA Hospitals
    • Take a Virtual Tour
    • Primary Care Practices
    • Specialty Care Practices
    • Immediate Care
    • Emergency Care
    • Pediatric Locations
    • Outpatient Surgery Centers
    • Other Locations
    • Interactive Map
    • Coming Soon!
  • Medical Services
  • For Patients & Visitors
    • Directions & Parking
    • Appointments: Call, Click, Come In
    • Admissions
    • Preparing For Surgery
    • Patient Services
    • Security & Parking Services
    • Office of the Patient Experience
    • For International Patients
    • Lodging & Nearby Services
    • Around Westwood
    • Gift Shops & Flowers
    • Patient Greeting Cards
    • Log in to myUCLAhealth
    • Billing and Insurance
    • Medical Records
    • Accountable Care Organization (ACO)
    • Price Transparency
    • Interactive Patient Education Videos (Emmi)
    • FAQs
    • Calendar of Events
    • Secure Email Messages
    • Health Resources
    • Share your story. Connect. Share. Improve. UCLA Health
    • Share Your Story
    • Send a Care Compliment
    • Health Publications
    • Vital Signs Newsletters
    • Health Tips for Parents
    • Contact Us
    • Appointments: Call, Click, Come in
    • Admissions Information
    • Advance Directive
    • Directions & Parking
    • Patient Services
    • Medical Records
    • myUCLAhealth
    • Smoke-Free
    • Publications
    • Health Resources
    • Around Westwood
    • Lodging
    • Preparing For Surgery
    • Patient-focused Technology Council
    • Health Forms
    • End of Life Option Act: Resources & Materials
    • Frequently Asked Questions
    • Secure Email Messages
    • Gift Shops
  • For Healthcare Professionals
    • Referring a Patient
    • Continuing Medical Education
    • Ethics Center
    • UCLA HealthLink
    • Physician to Physician Access Line (P2P)
    • David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
    • Clinical Informatics Fellowship
    • Academic Positions
    • Physician Careers
    • UCLA School of Dentistry
    • UCLA School of Nursing
    • Department of Nursing

    Physician Publications

    • Physicians Update
    • Clinical Updates
    • U Magazine
    • Physician to Physician Access Line (P2P)
    • Physician Careers
    • Clinical Informatics Fellowship
    • Flu Resources for Healthcare Professionals
    • Publications
  • Multimedia
    • UCLAMDCHAT Webinars
    • Community Health Program Videos
    • Closer to a Cure LLS Series
    • iTunes
    • Download Our Apps
    • Mini Med School
    • Demystifying Cancer Forum
    • TEDx UCLA Videos
    • Tips from our Physical Therapists
    • Patient Stories
    • Real Questions
    • Webinars on Demand
    • Pediatric Grand Rounds
    • Tune in to watch our health webinars
    • Community Health Program Videos
    • UCLAMDChat Webinars
    • iTunes
    • Download Our Apps
    • UCLA Health Zone Radio and Podcast
    • Mini Med School
    • Closer to A Cure
    • Demystifying Cancer Forum
    • TEDx UCLA Videos
    • Tips From Our Physical Therapists
    • Patient Stories
    • Real Questions
    • Back Pain Management
  • Find a Provider
  • UCLA Health
  • myUCLAhealth
  • School of Medicine

News Releases

  1. Home
  2. About Us
  3. News Releases

News Releases

Health and Behavior

Researchers identify possible key to slow progression toward AIDS

09/19/2012
One of the big mysteries of AIDS is why some HIV-positive people take more than a decade to progress to full-blown AIDS, if they progress at all.
 
Although the average time between HIV infection and AIDS in the absence of antiretroviral treatment is about 10 years, some individuals succumb within two years, while so-called slow progressors can stay healthy for 20 years or longer.
 
Researchers already know that many slow progressors carry a gene called HLA-B*57 (B57), an immune gene variant that is found in less than 5 percent of the general population but in 40 to 85 percent of slow progressors. Yet even among those with the B57 gene, the speed of disease progression can vary considerably.
 
Now, a group of investigators from the Multi-Center AIDS Cohort Study (MACS), housed within the UCLA AIDS Institute, may have uncovered the key to this variation. It is a killer T-cell immune response that occurs early on in HIV infection and targets a section — or epitope — of the HIV protein called IW9.
 
 The novel findings are featured on the cover of the October issue of the Journal of Virology.

Catherine Brennan - UCLA
Catherine Brennan 

 

 
"Since the hope for a vaccine is that it would elicit immune control, the thought has been that understanding how B57 protection works would yield helpful lessons and principles for vaccine design," said Catherine Brennan, an assistant research scientist in the department of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the study's lead author. "There have been a lot of efforts to understand how the immune response to HIV in B57 carriers is superior to the response in non-B57 carriers, but it has been hard to nail anything down conclusively."
 
HLA-B genes are known to work by activating killer T cells that recognize unique sections of proteins, or epitopes, but it has been a mystery which section or sections of HIV protein HLA-B57 and the killer T cells work through.
 
Previous research had largely focused on the killer T-cell response after several years of infection. However, Beth D. Jamieson, a professor of medicine at the Geffen School of Medicine and the study's principal investigator, believes that the most critical responses are likely to occur early during infection, when the T cells are still strong and can reduce the number of places where HIV hides out in the human body. 
 
Researchers have studied the immune response in the early months of infection, but since it is not easy to predict at early stages which people will ultimately become slow progressors, correlating early immune responses with long-term outcomes has been difficult.
 
"What made this kind of study possible for us is the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study, which is an incredible longitudinal study," Brennan said.
 
The MACS has been freezing blood samples every six months since 1984 from thousands of men either at risk of HIV infection or already infected. 
 
"The size and duration of the study, along with the careful documentation of participant health and stewardship of frozen samples, allowed us to recover blood samples taken shortly after HIV infection from 14 HLA-B57 carriers with known infection dates and known long-term outcomes," Brennan said. "This allowed us to correlate early immune responses with long-term outcomes."
 
It was important to the researchers to compare only the killer T-cell responses among those with the B57 gene variant, instead of comparing the responses of those with and without B57. Although B57 carriers have, on average, much better prognoses than non-carriers, there is tremendous variability among the population, and not all do well, Jamieson said.
 
"Since possession of the B57 variant is not sufficient, we wanted to determine what specific immune events in B57 carriers are associated with immune control of the virus," she said. "We found that those who targeted the IW9 epitope early in infection had significantly longer times until onset of AIDS than those who did not. The finding that targeting of IW9 seems to be important is novel, as this epitope had been overlooked in many earlier studies of B57 and HIV."
 
The researchers cautioned that the study was based on a small sample of only 14 individuals and that a wider pool of subjects is needed to replicate their findings. Also, their results point to a correlation with — not causation of — slower disease progression among B57 carriers who target the IW9 epitope soon after HIV infection.
 
"This work, although not powered by a large cohort and necessarily exploratory in nature, does suggest that the role of IW9 targeting in B57-mediated protection merits closer attention," the researchers conclude. "Understanding the detailed mechanisms by which B57 is associated with slow progression to disease will reveal underlying principles of immune control of HIV-1, which is critical for the development of rational vaccine-design strategies."
 
Grants from the National Institutes of Health (R21 AG032942 and R21 AI60486), an IDEA award to C.A.B. from the California HIV/AIDS Research Program (ID10-LA-007), and the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (AI-35040) funded this research. The Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study is funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, with additional supplemental funding from National Cancer Institute grants UO1-AI-35042, UL1-RR025005 (GCRC), UO1-AI-35043, UO1-AI-35039, UO1-AI-35040 and UO1-AI-35041.
 
Other researchers on the study included F. Javier Ibarrondo, Catherine A. Sugar, Mary Ann Hausner, Roger Shih, Hwee L. Ng, Roger Detels and Otto O. Yang, all of UCLA; Joseph B. Margolick and Lisa P. Jacobson of Johns Hopkins University; Charles R. Rinaldo of the University of Pittsburgh; and John Phair of Northwestern University.
 
The Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study, initiated in 1983 at the Johns Hopkins School of
Public Health, the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, Northwestern University School of Medicine, and the UCLA School of Public Health, continues to conduct studies and publish key papers on the natural history of untreated and treated HIV infection in 6972 men-who-have-sex-with-men.
 
The UCLA AIDS Institute, established in 1992, is a multidisciplinary think tank drawing on the skills of top-flight researchers in the worldwide fight against HIV and AIDS, the first cases of which were reported in 1981 by UCLA physicians. Institute members include researchers in virology and immunology, genetics, cancer, neurology, ophthalmology, epidemiology, social sciences, public health, nursing and disease prevention. Their findings have led to advances in treating HIV, as well as other diseases, such as hepatitis B and C, influenza and cancer.
 

Media Contact:
Enrique Rivero
(310) 794-2273
erivero@mednet.ucla.edu


Media Contact
Enrique Rivero
(310) 794-2273
erivero@mednet.ucla.edu



Latest News

Health and Behavior
Taming chronic inflammation may reduce illness, save lives
12/05/2019
Scientists from 22 institutions, including UCLA, call for early diagnosis, prevention and treatment to reduce the risk of chronic diseases.

Health and Behavior
Chronic opioid treatment may raise risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, study finds
12/03/2019
The UCLA-led team found that chronic opioid use increased the susceptibility to developing anxiety disorders.

Health and Behavior
UCLA launches new master's degree in genetic counseling in fall 2020
12/03/2019
Degree program will help meet the rising demand for specialists trained to guide patients facing complex genetic disorders.

Health and Behavior
Automated technique helps identify cancer cell metabolism inhibitors
12/02/2019
Research brief: The new method, using robotics, will speed up how researchers test for therapies that block the metabolism of non-small-cell lung cancer tumors.

Health and Behavior
David Geffen adds $46 million to landmark medical scholarships program
12/02/2019

UCLA has received an additional $46 million gift from longtime supporter and legendary entertainment visionary David Geffen, a reinvestment that brings the amount of the David Geffen Medical Scholarship Fund to $146 million.


Facebook Twitter Instagram Youtube LinkedIn
UCLA Health hospitals ranked best hospitals by U.S. News & World Report
  • UCLA Health
  • Find a Doctor
  • School of Medicine
  • School of Nursing
  • UCLA Campus
  • Directory
  • Newsroom
  • Subscribe
  • Patient Stories
  • Giving
  • Careers
  • Volunteer
  • International Services
  • Privacy Practices
  • Nondiscrimination
  • Billing
  • Health Plans
  • Emergency
  • Report Broken Links
  • Terms of Use
  • 1-800-UCLA-MD1
  • Maps & Directions
  • Contact Us
  • Your Feedback
  • Report Misconduct
  • Get Social
  • Sitemap

Sign in to myUCLAhealth