Doctors Create Model For Infant AIDS Infection

A research group comprised of scientists at the Harvard-affiliated Dana Farber Cancer Institute and area laboratories have developed a monkey model system to study the transmission of the AIDS virus from mother to fetus.

The model will enable scientists to "learn the specific about AIDS infection that will help [them] to develop treatment," according to Dr. Ritth M. Ruprecht, associate professor of medicine at the Medical School and senior author of a paper describing the model.

Ruprecht reports the monkey model along with colleagues from Brigham & Women's Hospital, Worcester's TSI Mason laboratories, and Tufts University in the current issue of the Jurnal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

In order to establish a high infection rate in newborn monkeys, the scientists exposed the animals to the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), whose behavior is similar to that of HIV, a virus which causes AIDS in humans. SIV was injected into the amniotic fluid, surrounding the fetus, during the late stages of pregnancy.

Ruprecht and her colleagues found that nearly all the monkeys tested positive for SIV-positive at birth. The results, Ruprecht said indicated that human babies whose mothers are HIV poaith's exposed to the virus late in the pregnancy or during actual delivery when the newborn comes in contact with skin or blood expose the fetus must come in contact with the amniotic find.

Ruprecht and her colleagues are continuing to seek possible therapies by studying the role of the immune system in mothers and infants. "We have a tool to study therapy which will give protections to the fetus," she said.