A recent trial on an HIV patient seems to have cured him. How? Well doctors used a bone marrow transplant, which is normally used as a cure for Leukaemia, to try and cure HIV. The research was conducted by Dr. Gero Huetter over a 42-year-old American man from Berlin who had been infected with the AIDS virus for more than a decade. The bone marrow transplant was not intended as a cure for HIV but as treatment for an unrelated acute myeloid leukemia. 20 months after his transplant he seems to be completely cured of HIV since no test show otherwise. The man's HIV treatment was stopped from the day of transplantation and has not been resumed. His immune cells were completely converted to the new CCR5 pattern by day 60 and there was no sign of HIV RNA or proviral DNA after day 68. However, Dr. Andrew Badley, head of the HIV and immunology research lab at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn, feels, “ a lot more scrutiny from a lot of different biological samples would be required to say it's not present.” Before the transplant the patient recieved tons of drgs and radiation to kill off any inffected cells and disable his immune system. He also stopped the use of important drugs to treat AIDS, anticipating that the new, mutated cells would ward off virus on their own.The thing that made this trial different than others is that some people carry a genetic mutation called Delta 32 that is resistant to HIV virus. If the mutation is inherited from both parents, it prevents HIV from attaching itself to a receptor critical for the spread of AIDS virus. It is really rare and only found in about 100 people. "It helps prove the concept that if somehow you can block the expression of CCR5, maybe by gene therapy, you might be able to inhibit the ability of the virus to replicate," said Fauci. And seeing as how this is an expensive treatment that no ordinary person will be able to afford is it really a cure?
Do you think we found a cure to HIV? Whats your input?
hey i wrote a blog about that. yeah its amazing and brings hope to many. yes it is a cure for HIV, but we do not have a cure for poverty( that is the real problem)
And seeing as how this is an expensive treatment that no ordinary person will be able to afford is it really a cure?
Chemo is expensive, yet it's still considered a cure for many cancers. What makes a cure for HIV/AIDS any different?
Obviously, there needs to be more tests to find out what happened with this man that caused this. There's a lot more research that needs to be done before there can be anything conclusive about anything, even the cost. However, it's definitely a great start.
I am treated as evil by people who claim that they are being oppressed because they are not allowed to force me to practice what they do. ~D. Dale Gulledge
...but realistically this will not result in an effective "cure" for the disease any time in the near future. The specific mutation that makes this procedure possible is extremely rare...only about 1-3% of the general population has the mutation). Unless we can find a way to artificially induce the mutation (which is possible, but the technology is still a long way off to do this), then the treatment is of limited usefulness.
TTFN,
Blackout
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If this Delta 32 gene mutation could be artificially induced, would it be a beginning of a vaccine?
-Sonja :)
"I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!" ~ Peter Finch as Howard Beale, 1976, "Network"
Quite possibly, but it wouldn't function the same way other vaccines do. The vaccines we have now just stimulate our immune system to fight off the virus when it first attacks. Any vaccine produced that causes a mutation would be aimed at changing DNA so that any further white blood cells produced would have this mutation. I can see it more as something that would be given to a developing fetus to ensure it wouldn't get HIV than something given to an adult, but I dunno.
~C
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It is a great start. All the cures we have for diseases now weren't cheap when they first came out either. I look at it as a booster step. We can take what we know now and we can use it to make something cheaper and more effective. Maybe they can find away to take the immunity and make more in a test tube like they do others. Then someday turn it into a shot. We now know how to cure it we just need away to make it cheaper.