(NaturalNews) An ancient Chinese medicine protocol known as "apitherapy" appears to be making a resurgence in modern times, as scientists continue to uncover the many amazing healing powers of bees and the substances they produce. And a new study recently published in the journal Antiviral Therapy affirms this, having found that bee venom, which is released during a bee sting, may hold the key to targeting and destroying HIV.
As reported by U.S. News & World Report, scientists from the Washington University (WU) School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, identified the presence of a compound known as melittin that they say exhibits powerful anti-HIV effects. The bee venom toxin was visibly observed to destroy the viral components of HIV while leaving healthy cells unharmed.
For their research, Joshua Hood and his colleagues from WU attached melittin to nanoparticles that are smaller than HIV. They then applied the resulting substance to HIV itself, where it was clearly observed to "rip holes" in the outer layer of the virus, effectively destroying it. But because of the particles' size, they did not harm healthy cells in the body.
According to ScienceNews.org, the team also applied the solution to healthy human cells obtained from vaginal walls. They observed that the substance did not visibly affect these healthy cells at all, illustrating the unique nature of the bee venom in differentiating between the cells it is supposed to attack, and the cells it is supposed to leave unharmed.
"Based on this finding, we propose that melittin-loaded nanoparticles are well-suited for use as topical vaginal HIV virucidal agents," wrote the authors in their paper. "Out hope is that in places where HIV is running rampant, people could use this as a preventative measure to stop the initial infections."
As far as HIV potentially growing resistance to the treatment later on down the road, researchers believe such a scenario will never materialize due to the nature of the mechanistic action. Because bee venom specifically destroys the outer layer of the virus, which results in the virus itself dying, there is little or no chance of resistance ever developing.
"Theoretically, melittin nanoparticles are not susceptible to HIV mutational resistance seen with standard HIV therapies," added the research team. "By disintegrating the [virus'] lipid envelope, [it's] less likely to develop resistance to the melittin nanoparticles."
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