CBD good for HIV-infected brain cells?

CBD may be a promising therapy for people living with HIV.

While the virus can be controlled with treatment, it can still wreak havoc on the brain and cause problems with cognition.

FIU researchers found CBD’s anti-inflammatory effects can essentially keep HIV-infected cells in the brain under control, preventing them from acting up.

This is important because neuroinflammation associated with HIV creates a dangerous domino effect: inflammation causes infected cells hiding in the brain to activate, start the replication process and spread the virus back into the body. As published in Scientific Reports, the team showed CBD works at the molecular level to lower inflammation and keep these cells dormant.

The suppression of both inflammation and the HIV-infected cells is key because of the way HIV acts. After it hijacks the immune cells in the bloodstream, HIV hitches a ride through the blood-brain barrier — designed to stop harmful substances from entering the brain. Once there, the virus targets microglia, the brain’s immune cells. These infected cells then go into a sort of hibernation.

“Even though HIV crosses the blood-brain barrier, antiretroviral medicines that keep the virus from replicating cannot effectively cross the blood-brain barrier, and so the brain becomes a repository for HIV," explains Adriana Yndart Arias, the study’s first author and FIU Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work Ph.D. student.

HIV-associated neuroinflammation wakes up the sleeping cells, causing them to produce the virus. The infection can then move back out of the brain into the bloodstream.

It perpetuates a vicious cycle where the infection keeps going, said Madhavan Nair, distinguished professor and director of FIU’s Institute of NeuroImmune Pharmacology.