A new study revealed that cocaine use is strongly connected to the brain's susceptibility to HIV infection, Huffington Post reported.

According to the researchers of the study who are based at the University of California, Los Angeles, cocaine rewires certain brain cells after even just a single use, affecting specific immune cells that make the body susceptible to the virus.

"Our studies focused on a unique population of immune cells (cells that constitute our body's defenses against infection), quiescent CD4 T cells, which can be targeted by HIV but are resistant to the virus," said Dr. Dimitrios Vatakis, lead researcher and co-director of UCLA's CFAR Virology Core Laboratory.

"We have shown that cocaine exposure sensitizes these cells and increases their susceptibility to infection," Vatakis told The Huffington Post in an email.

In the process of testing and experimentation, researchers gathered dormant immune cell samples that primarily constitute the majority of T cells in the human body.

The samples were collected from healthy human donors, and the said specimens were exposed to HIV following their exposure to cocaine in the laboratory.

Research scientists then compared the samples subjected to the testing with healthy cells, and they discovered that there is susceptibility enhancement within cells that were exposed to cocaine for three days.

The study - published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology October issue - concluded that cocaine really makes particular immune cells more susceptible to the virus, adding that the use of the said drug can hasten the actual transmission and progression of the virus.

In previous reports, cocaine, or crack cocaine, was also strongly linked to the accelerated proliferation of the CD4 cell count. According to a 2010 research, this is the main reason that the progression of HIV infection to full-blown AIDS takes place rapidly.

Meanwhile, another study - published early this year - suggests that an HIV protein boosts the effects of cocaine in mice by enhancing the viral transcription phase.