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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