I saw a snippet of a recent “NOVA” show, where a scientist found that certain people in England(during the period of the palgue ie “Black Death” , never got the disease! Specifically,one man was a village gravdigger…he buried 700 people who died of the plague, but never contracted the disease himself!
The scientist tracked down the descendents of this man, and found a descendnet who was also immune to AIDS!
My question (for thosewho saw the wholeshow): how does immunity to a bacterial disease(plague) confer immunity to a viral disease like AIDS? I would also like toknow if this points the way to any possible therapy for AIDS-can you pass this genetic variation on in DNA , on to other people?
Just wondering!
I have fibromyalgia and in my studies have found it written somewhere that most people are exposed to Herpes Virus 6 ( Not the one that give you cold sores or genital herpes) by the time they are around 18 months. People that have not contracted it (most of us do and never know and it never bothers us) can be exposed to HIV and not get AIDS. Apparently to develop to full blown AIDS, the HIV virus must attach cells that already have contracted the Herpes Virus 6. That may explain why some people get it and others don’t.
Rather than type my reply all over again, I’m going to link you to a post in this thread (it’s near the bottom). In essense, it involves a higher percentage of people in Europe (specifically, areas that were hit hard by the black plague) lacking the receptors that HIV uses to gain entry into cells.