Biomedicine and AIDS Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Biomedicine and AIDS - Essay Example How this article functions to describe the seven components of the scientific method is explained as follows: Experts have observed that in an HIV infected person the CD4 cells or transfer cells which function to regulate the messages sent from the immune system to the rest of the body get infected by HIV. This results in two things. Number one, the HIV infection causes some CD4 cells to be infected, and secondly the rest of the healthy cells which are not infected by HIV tend to cease to function properly and die early despite the fact that they were not infected. Therefore present drugs focus on inhibiting the infection ability to reproduce. However they do nothing to stop the healthy CD4 cells from dying without any reason. This causes ultimate damage. A drug invented to stop the healthy uninfected CD4 cells from dying would function to keep the immune system in working order and therefore it can prevent deaths. This is the drug that is being tested. A drug immudel-gp120 is being developed which is structured in a way that it would destroy the HIV infection's ability to destroy the healthy CD4 cells. HIV infection is covered with a protein called gp120. This gp120 protein falls off and moves freely in the bloodstream. It then sticks to CD4 cells but we can still not call them infected because gp120 alone is not harmful. B cells in the body function to produce antibodies which stick to anything they identify as foreign, entering the body so that the rest of the immune system can destroy it. The B cells identify the gp120 stuck on the healthy CD4 cells as foreign bodies therefore antibodies are produced which bind themselves to the gp120 on the healthy CD4 cells thus making the CD4 cells inactive. Immudel-gp 120 consists of two parts. First gp120 which does not bind to healthy CD4 cells but only to B cells which produce antibodies. The second part is a protein that kills anything it enters but it cannot enter on its own. It can only get into a cell if its other part i.e. the gp120 attached to it leads it inside the cell. And the only cells the gp120 can get into are the B cells that the scientists are trying to eliminate. The B cells attract the gp120 to themselves and are then destroyed by the protein thus as they are destroyed they can no more produce antibodies which play a role in destroying the CD4 cells. So this drug is administered to HIV infected patients and this is the experimental design of the drug. Data Collection Data collected indicates that the harmful B cells are eliminated due to the action of the drug. The pilot tests have been conducted on mice and humans. Data collection shows that using the drug immudel-gp120 as opposed to not using it shows a lower background level of antibody production in all three cases of no foreign particle entering the body, gp-120 entering the body and pokeweed mitogen entering the body. Use of no immudel-gp120 shows only lower background level in the case of no foreign particle entering, but in the other two cases the danger and risk factor of antibody production was very high. Results So results show that immudel-gp120 eliminated the production of anti-gp120 antibodies but does not harm the production of antibodies to other foreign proteins. Results also show no side effects of the drug in humans and mice. Conclusion It is safe to use the drug