Revealed: Secret of HIV's natural born killers

AFP - Scientists on Sunday said they had found a key piece in the puzzle as to why a tiny minority of individuals infected with HIV have a natural ability to fight off the deadly AIDS virus.

In a study they said holds promise for an HIV vaccine, researchers from four countries reported the secret lies not in the number of infection-killing cells a person has, but in how well they work.

Only about one person in 300 has the ability to control the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) without drugs, using a strain of "killer" cells called cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) cells, previous research has found.

Taking that discovery further, scientists from the United States, Canada, Japan and Germany reported that the strain has molecules called receptors that are better able to identify HIV-infected white blood cells for attack.

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