Chicago - A gene mutation present in about one in six white people slows the progress of AIDS in many HIV-infected newborns, raising the possibility of treatments exploiting the phenomenon, French researchers said yesterday.
The researchers studied 512 white children born to mothers infected with the virus that causes AIDS, 276 of whom had contracted the virus from their mothers. Of those, 49 children had inherited the mutated gene CCR5 from one of their parents. At the age of three years, 9 per cent of the infected children with the gene mutation developed symptoms of AIDS, while 28 per cent without the mutation had symptoms.
Study author Dr Micheline Marathi of the Institut National de la Sante de la Recherche Medicale, Paris, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, said the mutation may inhibit the invasion of cells by the virus.
