Infections are pH Sensitive

This is something doctors forget about. pH is something that is easy to test at home with inexpensive pH paper. Almost every physiological process in the body is pH sensitive and certainly the success of failure of your cancer treatment is pH sensitive. The most aggressive cancers have the lowest pH. Low pH is acid, that condition where you have an excess in H+ ions and too little OH, which means low oxygen conditions.

Certain viruses (including the rhinoviruses and coronaviruses that are most often responsible for the common cold and influenza viruses that produce flu) infect host cells by fusion with cellular membranes at low pH. Thus, they are classified as “pH-dependent viruses.” Fusion of viral and cellular membranes is pH dependent. The main finding of one study is that a strain of poliovirus type 1 requires low pH for injection of its genome into the cytosol.

It has been suggested that the hepatitis C virus (HCV) infects host cells through a pH-dependent internalization mechanism. This HCVpp-mediated fusion was dependent on low pH, with a threshold of 6.3 and an optimum at about 5.5.

Scientific investigation indicates that low pH is indeed required for the entry of poliovirus. The ability of cells to alter poliovirus in the presence of monensin was strongly increased at low pH. The main finding of one study is that a strain of poliovirus type 1 requires low pH for injection of its genome into the cytosol.