FORT COLLINS--A pair of Colorado State University researchers have launched two separate five-year studies into what causes a bacteria found virtually everywhere to mysteriously single out AIDS patients as hosts for disease.
Andrea Cooper and Julie Inamine, both scientists in the university's noted Mycobacteria Research Laboratory, each received grants worth nearly $1 million to investigate what triggers the bacteria to proliferate and cause disease in AIDS patients even though humans are not natural hosts for the bacteria.
The separate studies, funded by the National Institutes of Health, also will investigate why some strains of the bacteria, called Mycobacterium Avium, seem harmless and receptive to drugs, while other strains reproduce in the body unchecked and are drug-resistant.
The Colorado State researchers say the presence of Mycobacterium avium in AIDS patients is particularly troubling because it causes a disease that is resistant to standard drug treatments, thus requiring large doses of drug combinations.
Mycobacterium Avium Complex Disease, also called MAC, occurs in as much as 40 percent of people with AIDS and often is diagnosed toward the latter part of the patient's life. It can trigger a host of serious problems, including blood infections, hepatitis, skin lesions and pneumonia. Because Mycobacterium avium can be found virtually everywhere, AIDS patients can be exposed by taking a shower or eating food that contains the bacteria.
"Why, of all the bacterial pathogens out there, do AIDS patients seem to be affected by this one in particular?" Cooper said. "In many respects, this is a mystery. We are trying to find out what physiological responses are triggering the bacteria to develop into a disease in this particular group of people."
Although Mycobacterium avium belongs to the same family of well-studied
bacteria that cause tuberculosis and leprosy, not much is known ab
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Contact: Carrie Schafer
CSchafer@vines.colostate.edu
(970) 491-5432
Colorado State University
21-Nov-1997