{"id":790,"date":"2010-03-28T20:29:04","date_gmt":"2010-03-28T20:29:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/?p=790"},"modified":"2010-03-28T20:38:43","modified_gmt":"2010-03-28T20:38:43","slug":"going-bananas-to-prevent-hiv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/2010\/03\/28\/going-bananas-to-prevent-hiv\/","title":{"rendered":"Going Bananas to Prevent HIV"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nick Gubitosi<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Two weeks ago (March 19, 2010), scientists from the University of Michigan<\/a> published a study about an ingredient known as BanLec which is derived from bananas and acts as a potent inhibitor of the HIV virus.\u00a0 What stands out about BanLec is that it is a cheaper form of therapy that may provide a wider range of protection when compared to current anti-retrovirals<\/a>\u00a0which are commonly synthetic and made ineffective after\u00a0small\u00a0mutations to the virus.\u00a0 The cost and effectiveness of BanLec make it a promising candidate for the future prevention of HIV and AIDS<\/a>, giving it the potential to save millions of lives.<\/p>\n

BanLec is a type of lectin found in bananas that can identify foreign invaders\u00a0such as\u00a0a virus and attach to it.\u00a0 A lectin is a naturally occurring chemical in plants that is of great interest to scientists because of its ability to halt the chain of reaction that leads to a variety of infections.\u00a0 The researchers in this study\u00a0discovered that BanLec inhibits HIV infection by binding to the virus\u2019s protein envelope, therefore\u00a0blocking it from entering the body.<\/p>\n

According to Michael D. Swanson<\/a>, the lead author of the study, \u201cThe problem with some HIV drugs is that the virus can mutate and become resistant, but that is much harder to do in the presence of lectins.\u201d\u00a0 He goes on to explain that the lectins work by binding to sugars found all over the envelope of the HIV virus, and because of this the virus would have to go through multiple mutations for the lectin to stop working.\u00a0 This makes drugs such as BanLec more effective than some current anti-retrovirals which could become ineffective after one mutation to the virus.<\/p>\n

So far all tests have been conducted in the laboratory, but Swanson is currently working on making BanLec suitable for human patients.\u00a0 Its clinical use is still considered to be far away but researchers believe it could ultimately be used as a self applied microbicide for the prevention of HIV infection.<\/p>\n

While BanLec is no cure to AIDS, the information gained from this study is very exciting because according to researchers, millions of lives could be saved over the course of a few years with just\u00a0a moderately successful treatment.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> for source<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nick Gubitosi Two weeks ago (March 19, 2010), scientists from the University of Michigan published a study about an ingredient known as BanLec which is derived from bananas and acts as a potent inhibitor of the HIV virus.\u00a0 What stands out about BanLec is that it is a cheaper form of therapy that may … Continue reading Going Bananas to Prevent HIV<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":276,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2074],"tags":[2096,2360,2083,2278,6367],"class_list":["post-790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-treatment","tag-aids","tag-banana","tag-hiv","tag-prevention","tag-treatment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/276"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/sciencenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}