[Cure to HIV?]

[GrisoM]

Optimism after man's AIDS cured through bone marrow transplant

 

An American man who suffered from AIDS appears to have been cured of the disease 20 months after receiving a targeted bone marrow transplant normally used to fight leukemia, his doctors said.

 

While researchers - and the doctors themselves - caution that the case might be no more than a fluke, others say it may inspire a greater interest in gene therapy to fight the disease that claims 2 million lives each year. The virus has infected 33 million people worldwide.

 

Dr Gero Huetter said Wedneday his 42-year-old patient, an American living in Berlin who was not identified, had been infected with the AIDS virus for more than a decade. But 20 months after undergoing a transplant of genetically selected bone marrow, he no longer shows signs of carrying the virus.

 

"We waited every day for a bad reading," Huetter said.

 

It has not come. Researchers at Berlin's Charite hospital and medical school say tests on his bone marrow, blood and other organ tissues have all been clean.

 

However, Dr Andrew Badley, director of the HIV and immunology research lab at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said those tests have probably not been extensive enough.

 

"A lot more scrutiny from a lot of different biological samples would be required to say it's not present," Badley said.

 

This isn't the first time marrow transplants have been attempted for treating AIDS or HIV infection. In 1999, an article in the journal Medical Hypotheses reviewed the results of 32 attempts reported between 1982 and 1996. In two cases, HIV was apparently eradicated, the review reported.

 

Huetter's patient was under treatment at Charite for both AIDS and leukemia, which developed unrelated to HIV.

 

As Huetter - who is a haematologist, not an HIV specialist - prepared to treat the patient's leukaemia with a bone marrow transplant, he recalled that some people carry a genetic mutation that seems to make them resistant to HIV infection. If the mutation, called Delta 32, is inherited from both parents, it prevents HIV from attaching itself to cells by blocking CCR5, a receptor that acts as a kind of gateway.

 

"I read it in 1996, coincidentally," Huetter told reporters at the medical school. "I remembered it and thought it might work."

 

Roughly one in 1,000 Europeans and Americans have inherited the mutation from both parents, and Huetter set out to find one such person among donors that matched the patient's marrow type. Out of a pool of 80 suitable donors, the 61st person tested carried the proper mutation.

 

Before the transplant, the patient endured powerful drugs and radiation to kill off his own infected bone marrow cells and disable his immune system - a treatment fatal to between 20 and 30 percent of recipients.

 

He was also taken off the potent drugs used to treat his AIDS. Huetter's team feared that the drugs might interfere with the new marrow cells' survival. They risked lowering his defences in the hopes that the new, mutated cells would reject the virus on their own.

 

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases in the US, said the procedure was too costly and too dangerous to employ as a firstline cure. But he said it could inspire researchers to pursue gene therapy as a means to block or suppress HIV.

 

"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," Fauci said.

 

David Roth, a professor of epidemiology and international public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said gene therapy as cheap and effective as current drug treatments is in very early stages of development.

 

"That's a long way down the line because there may be other negative things that go with that mutation that we don't know about."

 

Even for the patient in Berlin, the lack of a clear understanding of exactly why his AIDS has disappeared means his future is far from certain.

 

"The virus is wily," Huetter said. "There could always be a resurgence."

 

Source:

http://www.3news.co.nz/News/Optimism-after-mans-AIDS-cured-through-bone-marrow-transplant/tabid/209/articleID/79882/cat/41/Default.aspx

 

This could be something good , even if it is just the start of the investigation , lets hope this be not fake + i bet this will be in all news world wide tomorrow or next week

[sufferwounds]

if this happen i am going to fuck with no condom

[xXSkillerXx]

if this happen i am going to -beep- with no condom

{GR} Opa re gamia. -,-

 

//OntopiC

 

Wow...AIDS was thought to be cureless. O_o

Well i didnt read the whole page...but if you read this line :

 

"That's a long way down the line because there may be other negative things that go with that mutation that we don't know about."

 

They are not 100% sure and this may cause another problems...

But lets think positive. :P

[Lain]

Yes, I've seen this on news yesterday and It's a miracle.

 

Although doctor said that If they will cure it this way, it could bring up much more problems.

 

So let's hope they will find a safe way to cure HIV curse.

[sagivstern]

wow sounds promising but the side effects are not good... but i think for HIV infected person he would take this without hesitating even with the side effect... you can never know someone until he shows you hes true nature

[police911]

hope is the only way

[Philipe]

hope is the only way

 

But lets think positive. All need some hope.

[MiraDBZ]

It's a miracle.

 

 

There are no such things as miracles.

[naxo13]

i hope that they develop a new cure without this side effects >.<

[HeLL_GoD]

The thing is that the cure exists but "they" dont want to release it to the public...

[scovron]

The thing is that the cure exists but "they" dont want to release it to the public...

 

i doubt that there is no conspiracy theory like in x files:P

As for this one i read about it and in this method are way to much conditions to be completed until it works, also it works only for some percent of ppl so its not confirmed that every person can get hep with his/her illnes