PROBIOTIC bacteria can boost the immune systems of children with AIDS, claim
researchers in New York.
Before starting a daily course of a fruit drink laced with the bacterium
Lactobacillus plantarum 299v, the 13 children in the trial were losing
weight and had mouths infected with Candida albicans, the yeast that
causes thrush. 鈥淲e gave one patient the drink to help with his diarrhoea, for
example, and within two months he鈥檇 gained two kilograms,鈥� says Susanna
Cunningham-Rundles, who led the as-yet unpublished study at Cornell University鈥檚
Weill Medical College. The children鈥檚 yeast infections also cleared up. The
drink improved the quality of the children鈥檚 lives before they died, she says.
Tests showed that the bacteria鈥攐riginally isolated from the stools of
Swedes鈥攈ad colonised their guts, displacing harmful organisms such as
yeasts.
The immune systems of 10 of the 13 children also improved. For example, white
blood cells called CD4 cells, which are targeted by HIV, recovered their potency
as measured by their ability to divide on exposure to a substance called PHA, a
standard test. White blood cells called phagocytes, which engulf invaders, were
also more active.
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Cunningham-Rundles attributes these improvements to the bacteria. She
presented her findings last month in London at the British launch of ProViva, a
fruit drink developed by Probi of Lund in Sweden that contains L.
plantarum 299v.
Glenn Gibson, who studies probiotics at the University of Reading in
Berkshire, believes the bacteria 鈥渆xercise鈥� the immune system by providing a
harmless target. 鈥淭his is a non-specific response, a general stoking up of the
immune system,鈥� he says.