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Published online 23 January 2008 | Nature 451, 388-389 (2008) | doi:10.1038/451388a
News Feature
Virology: The battle within
Viral and microbial interactions within living tissues are more complex than previously thought. Melinda Wenner explores whether a periodic table of the infectious could help sort out the mess.
In 2001, Paolo Lusso asked his colleague Leonid Margolis for a favour. Lusso, a virologist at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan, Italy, had recently discovered that HIV patients are often co-infected with human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6).
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Viral-viral and viral-bacterial polymicrobial infections, synergisms and antagonisms present a very unique challenge for research into the intricate mechanisms of microbial pathogenesis and host immunoresponsiveness. These should be further investigated for the prospects of living avirulent antispecies-antibiotics that may help conquer the global trend of antimicrobial resistances. EDET ANWAN