KARACHI: A mysterious new disease has left a number of people in Asia and some in the US with AIDS-like symptoms even though they are not infected with HIV.
The disease affects the immune system of the patient and damages it, leaving him incapable
to repulse germs as healthy people can.
The reason of the disease is mysterious but it does not seem to be contagious.
Researchers are calling this new disease an ‘adult-onset’ immunodeficiency syndrome because
it develops later in life and they don’t know why or how.
It appears to be another kind of acquired immune deficiency that is not inherited and occurs
in adults.
“However, it doesn’t spread the way AIDS does through a virus,” said Dr Sarah Browne, a
scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
Brown led the study with researchers in Thailand and Taiwan where most of the cases have
been found since 2004.
The virus that causes AIDS destroys T-cells, key soldiers of the immune system that fight
germs.
The new disease doesn’t affect those cells, but causes a different kind of damage.
Browne’s study of more than 200 people in Taiwan and Thailand found that most of those with
the disease make substances called auto-antibodies that block interferon-gamma, a chemical
signal that helps the body clear infections.
Blocking that signal leaves people like those with AIDS - vulnerable to viruses, fungal
infections and parasites, but especially micobacteria, a group of germs similar to
tuberculosis that can cause severe lung damage.
Researchers have concluded that the fact that almost all the patients so far have been Asian
or Asian-born people living somewhere else suggests that genetic factors and something in
the environment such as an infection may prompt the disease.
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