That's the unlikely question a team of Thai and U.S. researchers are testing in Chiang Rai, a province in northern Thailand. While studying the effect of tropical diseases on patients infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, a team from the U.S. Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Science unexpectedly discovered that scrub typhus caused HIV loads to temporarily fall to undetectable levels in four patients out of a 10-patient study group. Normally, co-infection with other diseases causes HIV levels to skyrocket, not plummet.
Scrub typhus is an infectious disease caused by the parasite Rickettsia tsutsugamushi.
It's transmitted to humans by the bite of mites that acquired the infection from wild rodents. While it can be fatal, the disease is easily treated by antibiotics. When the Britain-based medical journal Lancet published the team's preliminary findings in August, a flurry of international and local publicity ensued. George Watt, chief investigator of the study, is reluctant to overplay those preliminary findings. But Watt has a hard time suppressing his optimism.