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.