Stress Hormone Believed to Trigger HIV Development

Society | March 16, 2007, Friday // 00:00

Development of the HIV virus in the human body is highly dependent on person's emotionality, scientists have found.

According to Alfred T. Sapse the stress hormone cortisol plays a role in the development of AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis, and other devastating diseases. If he's right, drugs that block the stress hormone cortisol could transform the treatment of millions of people.

Sapse contends that HIV, the AIDS virus, forces the adrenal glands to churn out lots of cortisol, which damages the immune system. "Cortisol is probably one of the most violent immunodepressants there is." Sapse detailed his theory on cortisol and disease in the September Psychoneuroendocrinology.

A second group has data that support an alternative theory of cortisol and AIDS. Its research hints that one of HIV's proteins masquerades as a glucocorticoid, the class of stress hormones that includes cortisol. That wily HIV protein then subverts the body's immune system.

Cortisol also assists the body in routing a viral infection or healing damaged tissue. Such reactions are usually beneficial, but when too much cortisol dampens the immune response, it shuts down the very process that fights a deadly microbe or keeps a malignant cell from exploding into an invasive tumor.

Another team has found a different line of evidence linking cortisol to AIDS.
David B. Weiner of the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center in Philadelphia and his colleagues have shown that an HIV protein mimics the actions of the glucocorticoids, including cortisol.

Scientists continue to seek drugs that counter cortisol and thus fight AIDS.

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