Mothers infected with HIV, the AIDS virus, face a dilemma when it comes to feeding baby: Because some of their virus can be shed in breast milk, babies risk becoming infected as they drink it.
Two research teams are now investigating a germ-warfare strategy to treat such vulnerable infants. They would supplement breast milk with HIV-quashing bacteria. These beneficial microbes can’t guarantee a child won’t become infected, but they could greatly diminish the chance this will happen, says HIV specialist Ruth Connor of Dartmouth Medical School in Lebanon, N.H. They reported isolating certain lactic acid bacteria from the breast milk of healthy women that substantially inhibit the growth and infectivity of human immunodeficiency virus type 1, or HIV-1. b. In test-tube studies, all 38 strains of bacteria tested — representing 15 different species — showed some inhibition of HIV.
Lin Tao, a microbiologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Department of Oral Biology, has spent the better part of a decade working on a probiotic treatment for infants whose mothers are infected with HIV. The strain his group is studying does far better than others but still falls short of wiping out all HIV that might enter an infant’s gut. That’s why his group’s new strategy is to include a second probiotic, one that can bolster an infant’s immune system. The first bacterium reduces the number of virus particles that survive in the infant gut. The second bug, by enhancing immunity, increases the threshold number of viruses needed to cause infection, Tao says.
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