There is an indirect correlation between how high HIV levels are in the blood and how long a patient with AIDS will live. The higher the HIV levels in the blood, the shorter the life span of someone with AIDS. An AIDS patient's immune system has its hands full just trying to eliminate the virus. If you add another infection on top of it all the immune system can't keep up with all the work, and the HIV virus takes advantage of the situation.
However, a recent study reported in The Lancet (August 5, 2000) demonstrated that one particular bacterial infection actually lowers the level of HIV in AIDS patients. George Watt, a tropical disease specialist at the United States Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences in Bangkok, found an AIDS patient who had acquired a bacterial disease called scrub typhus. When the scientist checked the amount of HIV in this patient's blood he found very low levels of the virus. He was intrigued by this and went about looking for more AIDS patients with active scrub typhus. He found 10 people in all and when he compared these 10 patients' HIV blood levels he discovered they were much lower than those of AIDS patients with other types of diseases.
Scrub typhus is caused by a bacterium called Rickettsia tsutsugamushi (now has a new name: Orientia tsutsugamushi). This species of bacteria lives inside human cells and is transmitted by bites from chiggers. The disease is primarily found in eastern Asia, Australia, Japan and other Western Pacific islands.
A person with scrub typhus experiences a severe headache, fever, muscle aches and a rash that starts on the trunk of a person's body and then spreads to their head, arms and legs (extremities). Usually the person will get better in two to three weeks without treatment. Antibiotics can be used, and usually the person will feel better a day or two after they start taking the antibiotic.
Upon further analysis this scientist discovered that scrub typhus does not help the AIDS patient's immune system to fight the HIV. In fact, their levels of the white blood cells that help kill the HIV virus (CD4 positive T-cells) were lower in those people with both AIDS and active scrub typhus when compared to patients with AIDS and some other disease.
From these studies, it appears that scrub typhus bacteria cause some sort of inhibitory factor to be made by AIDS patients that will stop
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