Source: Scientific American
Date: August 15, 2007
Summary:
Researchers at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research's Del E. Webb Center for Neuroscience and Aging Research report in the journal Cell Stem Cell that HIV-associated dementia is triggered by the death of adult neurons in patients' brains as well as by the arrested development of neural stem cells, which normally would mature and replace the disabled nerve cells. Perhaps more compelling, he says, is that the deadly virus uses a protein on its surface to attack the same molecular pathway in both the nascent and fully developed cells.
