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HIV Positive Man Cured By Stem Cell Transplant

the_gloaming09

By the_gloaming09
in How We See The World

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the_gloaming09

the_gloaming09

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An HIV patient in Germany has been declared fully cured of the disease by a stem cell transplant, The Huffington Post reports.

 

Timothy Ray Brown underwent the treatment back in 2007, and doctors now say that extensive tests "strongly suggest that cure of HIV infection has been achieved."

 

While antiretrovirals have made HIV fully treatable, Brown is the first patient ever to be cured of the disease.

 

 

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/hiv-positive-man-cured-by-stem-cell-transplant-2010-12#ixzz187SxNvto

 

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/hiv-positive-man-cured-by-stem-cell-transplant-2010-12

 

 

wow... hopefully this might be the answer to the cure of this terrible disease

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SueDeNimes

SueDeNimes

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Not as awesome as that short article sounded like

The case of a man who was cured of HIV infection makes headlines in the U.S. today. However, the case is not entirely new: GGG.at reported in November 2008 about it.

 

Timothy Ray Brown is known as the "Berlin patient". The U.S. citizen who lives in Berlin, was not infected with HIV, but also suffered from leukemia. To cure this, it took Brown a stem cell therapy. By chance, had the stem cells of the appropriate donor mutation that made the donor against the HIV virus immune - and after the bone marrow donation and Brown.

 

The bone marrow of the donor had the mutation Delta 32nd It blocks the gene as a goalkeeper, the cells, the virus remains locked. This mutation occurs only in about one to three percent of the European population. In addition, the doctors at Brown the right person under 80 bone marrow donors choose, in general, there is in leukemia but less than five suitable donor.

 

Meanwhile the virus at Brown for three years no longer detectable. "We have examined not only the blood but also organs and the central nervous system," the doctor responsible Charité-Gero Hütter said in 2008. When healed, he wanted to explain to the patient but not at that time: "This virus is tricky, " said Hutter. It might hide well, also had a further mutation to the "Keeper"fool in front of the body cells, is conceivable.

 

For other patients, the procedure is not suitable to cure their HIV infection. The chance of finding a suitable donor, which has also the gene mutation is very low. Moreover, a stem cell transplant is very dangerous, says Hütter.

http://www.ggg.at/index.php?id=68&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=3653&cHash=6921e3c74aaadf1cb3a2bb5f5933fe2f

(google translate used, couldn't be bothered to correct errors, it's understandable. :))

 

And here's another article from cnn

Researchers report possible HIV infection cure; others cite dangers

 

By Tom Watkins, CNN

 

 

(CNN) -- Researchers in Germany are reporting that they may have cured a man of HIV infection. If true, that would represent a scientific advance, but not necessarily a treatment advance, said researchers familiar with the work.

 

In the study, published last week online in the journal Blood, researchers at Charite-University Medicine Berlin treated an HIV-infected man who also had acute myeloid leukemia -- a cancer of the immune system -- by wiping out his own immune system with high-dose chemotherapy and radiation and giving him a stem-cell transplant. Stem cells are immature cells that can mature into blood cells.

 

At the time of the transplant, which occurred in February 2007, he stopped taking anti-HIV medications.

 

Thirteen months later, after a relapse of the leukemia, he underwent a second round of treatment followed by another stem-cell transplant from the same donor.

 

The donor's stem cells contained a rare, inherited gene mutation that made them naturally resistant to infection with HIV, according to the authors, led by Kristina Allers, who hypothesized that HIV would nevertheless rebound over time. But that has not happened.

 

After three-and-a-half years off of anti-HIV drugs, the patient shows no sign of either leukemia or HIV replication and his immune system has been restored to normal health, the researchers reported, concluding, "our results strongly suggest that cure of HIV has been achieved in this patient."

 

But AIDS researchers predicted the report will have little impact on practice.

 

"This probably is a cure, but it comes at a bit of a price," said Dr. Michael Saag, professor of medicine and director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham AIDS Center.

 

"For him to receive the donor cells, his body had to have all of his immune system wiped out" and then receive a bone marrow transplant, Saag noted. "The Catch-22 here is that the best candidates for a cure, ideally, are people who are healthy" and don't have leukemia.

 

The treatment associated with wiping out the immune system "is very hazardous," he said in a telephone interview.

 

"Even if somebody doesn't die from a transplant, there are complications that make it very unpleasant for people to live with," he said, citing graft-versus-host disease, where the infused donor cells attack the body. In a number of cases, the transplant proves fatal.

 

The study is a proof of the concept "that our understanding of HIV biology is correct, and that if you eliminate -- not just in theory but in practice -- all of the cells in the body that are producing HIV and replace them with uninfected cells, you have a cure," Saag said.

 

But remaining infected with HIV is not always associated with the same grim outcome that was the norm prior to the mid-1990s, when more effective anti-HIV drugs were developed, he said.

 

"We can keep people alive for a normal life span," he said. "That means a 25-year-old diagnosed today with HIV has a reasonably good chance of living to 80, 85, 90."

 

Further limiting the treatment's potential appeal is the fact that it could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for each patient who gets it, he said.

 

"It's not going to be applicable unless they develop leukemia or lymphoma and need a bone-marrow transplant,"Saag said.

 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called it impractical. "It's hard enough to get a good compatible match for a transplant like this," he said in a statement. "But you also have to find (a) compatible donor that has this genetic defect, and this defect is only found in 1% of the Caucasian population and 0% of the black population. This is very rare."

 

But HIV itself is not. According to the World Health Organization, 33.4 million people worldwide have the virus that causes AIDS.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/12/14/hiv.infection.cure/

 

 

Do you all know this already? :thinking:

I became curious because it would be all over the news if it was that big a breakthrough as it sounded like from the first article posted here.

As it wasn't mentioned everywhere it wasn't a big surprise to read the detailed explanations that it's not as awesome as it seemed at first. [/complicated sentence that's probably not understandable]

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Ambergris

Ambergris

Posted
Posted
Not as awesome as that short article sounded like

http://www.ggg.at/index.php?id=68&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=3653&cHash=6921e3c74aaadf1cb3a2bb5f5933fe2f

(google translate used, couldn't be bothered to correct errors, it's understandable. :))

 

And here's another article from cnn

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/12/14/hiv.infection.cure/

 

 

Do you all know this already? :thinking:

I became curious because it would be all over the news if it was that big a breakthrough as it sounded like from the first article posted here.

As it wasn't mentioned everywhere it wasn't a big surprise to read the detailed explanations that it's not as awesome as it seemed at first. [/complicated sentence that's probably not understandable]

 

Thanks for clearing that up with that little research. I never heard anything about the subject before this thread...

 

Although the discovery might seem a little bit fortuitous, the fact that the transplant of HIV-inmune stem cells just worked is really interesting imo. This might be a big step in the battle against this virus. Let's hope a cure will be found in some years. :)

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