Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) believe they have begun to decode how a reservoir of infection can persist in HIV-positive populations.

Their work is published ahead of print in the August 17, 2011 online issue of Nature:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10347.html

The research team proposes that a type of HIV infection that uses infected cells to get close to uninfected cells and then discharge a large load of virus on them, may be the reason small populations of HIV-infected cells persist on effective ART.