SCIENCE NEWS, March 30 1991, pg 207
Shocking Treatment Proposed For AIDS
Zapping the AIDS virus with low voltage electric
current can nearly eliminate its ability to infect human white blood cells
cultured in the laboratory, reports a research team at the Albert Einstein
College of Medicine in New York City. William D Lyman and his colleagues
found that exposure to 50 to 100 microamperes of electricity - comparable
to that produced by a cardiac pacemaker - reduced the infectivity of the
AIDS virus (HIV) by 50 to 95 percent. Their experiments, described March
14 in Washington D.C., at the First International Symposium on Combination
Therapies, showed that the shocked viruses lost the ability to make an
enzyme crucial to their reproduction, and could no longer cause the white
cells to clump together - two key signs of virus infection. The finding
could lead to tests of implantable electrical devices or dialysis-like
blood treatments in HIV-infected patients Lyman says. In addition, he
suggests that blood banks might use electricity to zap HIV, and vaccine
developers might use electrically incapacitated viruses as the basis for
an AIDS vaccine.
LONGEVITY, Dec 1992, pg 14
"Electrocuting" The AIDS Virus, A Safer-Yet Blood
Supply
Despite official reassurances about the
safety of the nation's blood supply, concern lingers that small amounts of
HIV-infected blood may be sneaking through, especially since current
screening detects only antibodies to the virus, which can take months to
form. But now a new electrical process for cleaning blood of viruses may
solve the problem. At the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York
City, Steven Kaali, M.D., has found that most of the AIDS viruses in a
blood sample will lose their infectious capability after being zapped by a
very low-level current. Repeated exposure appears to leave blood virtually
free of HIV, as well as Hepatitis- without harming blood cells. Kaali
cautions that it will take years of testing before a virus-electrocuting
device is ready for use. But, ultimately, he predicts, it could be used
not just to purify blood, but to treat people with AIDS, by channeling
their blood out of the body, exposing it to virus-killing current and then
returning it. - Sharon McAuliffe
THE HOUSTON POST, March 20, 1991, section A-10 Your Health/Medicine
Scientists say Electric Current may help fight AIDS
Reuters News Service New
York - Doctors at a prestigious New York medical center are testing a new
way to fight AIDS - using electrical energy to weaken the killer virus -
and say their first results are encouraging. Researchers William Lyman and
Steven Kaali of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine said Tuesday that
initial laboratory tests have shown electrical current can weaken the
virus believed to cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome. The two men
said they plan to move to the next phase of the experiment in April using
blood samples from people with AIDS. If their tests are successful, the
researchers hope it could lead to a new way to treat AIDS patients,
possibly involving a dialysis-type machine in which an AIDS patient's
blood would be treated with electrical current outside the body. "What we
have done is expose the AIDS virus in laboratory circumstances to
electrical current and then incubated the virus with white blood cells
susceptible to the virus. We found that the virus became much more
ineffective," Kaali, a specialist in the medical use of electrical
current, said. He added that the use of electrical energy has no toxic
side effects and that a similar technique has been used as a treatment for
reducing Herpes.
Click here to see the lab test results of HIV inactivation by electric current
from patent US5,139,684
(of Kaali & Schwolsky 8-18-92)
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