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pozmagazine:

HIV Caught in the Act! On Video and in Real Time!
In the gif above, HIV-infected B immune cells are red, seen traveling between the inner and outer lymph node. Throughout this process, HIV kills CD4 cells and ultimately charts a path toward spreading throughout the body.
Credit: Xaver Sewald and Walther Mothes, Yale University

I wanted to give an immunologist’s reading of this paper, and try to clarify some things that are being misreported.

That specific video is actually murine leukemia virus (a mouse retrovirus which infects B cells) and not HIV (which doesn’t).

As I understand the article, the main point is that a certain subset of macrophages, which live at the junction between the fluid and the cellular parts of the lymph node, are able to transfer retroviral particles without being infected themselves, and this transfer requires a certain protein called CD169.

It is worth noting that a similar finding was made about 15 years ago about dendritic cells and a protein called DC-SIGN.

This new paper has a small amount of data in so-called “humanized mice” which are mice which have been reconstituted with human liver, thymus and bone marrow in order to have something resembling a human immune system in a mouse. But most of the data in the paper is actually about murine leukemia virus, which is only distantly related to HIV.

In my opinion, this new paper will probably not add much to actual HIV treatment strategies, since it is concerned with very early events in HIV infection, at the point where post-exposure prophylaxis has already been shown to be very effective.

It is also worth notice that Science Magazine is kind of notorious for publishing hot but not very robust research.