Malaria therapy can be used in AIDS treatment

By Lidia Wasowicz

SAN FRANCISCO (UPI): Taking a lesson from the past, researchers have used malaria therapy to treat AIDS patients -- with preliminary success, investigators said last week.

In the small study, reported at the 9th International Congress of Immunology, inoculation with a curable form of malaria appeared to boost the immune systems of two patients infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, HIV, which causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome, AIDS.

Immune disability is the hallmark of the deadly disease, stripping the patients of their protection against invading microbes and leaving them vulnerable to opportunistic infections.

Doctors at the Municipal Health and Anti-Epidemic Station of Guangzhou, China, vaccinated the study subjects with a treatable form of malaria, which was cured with drugs in three weeks, said co-researcher Dr. Xiao Ping Chen.

Cells

Following the treatment, the investigators found, the patients' disease-fighting CD4 -- helper T cells -- and CD8 -- killer T cells -- increased. Both types of immune system cells have remained elevated for a year without other treatment, and the patients continue to do well, said Dr. Henry Heimlich of the Heimlich Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio, who reported the findings at the conference in San Francisco.

"Drug therapy can weaken HIV virus and increase CD4 cells, but the effect is short-lived. The virus then mutates, multiplies and depletes CD4 cells, resulting in full-blown AIDS," Heimlich said.

"No other treatment thus far announced for HIV infection has produced such dramatic and prolonged results, and no other treatment has delivered results as safely and inexpensively," said Dr. John Trowbridge, president of the Great Lakes Association for Clinical Medicine, which authorized the study.

Doctors cautioned the results are preliminary and need to be corroborated in larger trials.

Strategy

Using one disease to cure or prevent another is a well- established medical strategy; cowpox to prevent smallpox and the Sabin live polio vaccine are but two noteworthy examples.

Malaria blood was used for 60 years by the U.S. Public Health Service to treat tens of thousands of patients with neurosyphilis, syphilis of the brain -- until the disease was eradicated.

In a 1991 study in Africa, U.S. government investigators testing the safety of malaria therapy on HIV-infected patients found no evidence the malaria accelerated HIV progression and that "there is no adverse clinical or epidemiological association between these two important public health problems."

Other studies also have indicated malaria is not one of the opportunistic diseases that endanger AIDS patients.

A 1990 study of 112 children with AIDS in Africa found that all 41 children infected with malaria and HIV were still alive while 35 percent of the 71 youngsters infected solely with AIDS had died.

The researchers plan to follow the current patients at regular intervals, treat additional patients and conduct duplicate studies in other locations.

"Future research will focus on the process by which the malaria parasite stimulates the immune system so that the malaria's function can be duplicated through chemical means," Heimlich said.