brokenandtwisted
November 12th, 2008, 11:42 PM
Some good news!
Miracle AIDS cure following bone marrow transplant
* Patrick Mcgroarty, Berlin
* November 13, 2008 - 8:20AM
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 say.
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 two million lives a year. The virus has infected 33 million people worldwide.
Dr Gero Huetter said 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 showed no signs of AIDS.
However, Dr Andrew Badley, director of the HIV and immunology research lab at the Mayo Clinic said those tests were probably not extensive enough.
``A lot more scrutiny from a lot of different biological samples would be required to say it's not present,'' Badley said.
Marrow transplants have been used before to treat AIDS or HIV.
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 leukaemia, which developed unrelated to HIV.
As Huetter - who is a hematologist, 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.
cont'd (http://www.watoday.com.au/world/miracle-aids-cure-following-bone-marrow-transplant-20081113-65q7.html?page=2)
Pretty cool. We can use that mutation in a formula (years down the road, yeah, pain in the ass...) to effectively cure AIDS? Interesting...
Miracle AIDS cure following bone marrow transplant
* Patrick Mcgroarty, Berlin
* November 13, 2008 - 8:20AM
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 say.
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 two million lives a year. The virus has infected 33 million people worldwide.
Dr Gero Huetter said 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 showed no signs of AIDS.
However, Dr Andrew Badley, director of the HIV and immunology research lab at the Mayo Clinic said those tests were probably not extensive enough.
``A lot more scrutiny from a lot of different biological samples would be required to say it's not present,'' Badley said.
Marrow transplants have been used before to treat AIDS or HIV.
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 leukaemia, which developed unrelated to HIV.
As Huetter - who is a hematologist, 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.
cont'd (http://www.watoday.com.au/world/miracle-aids-cure-following-bone-marrow-transplant-20081113-65q7.html?page=2)
Pretty cool. We can use that mutation in a formula (years down the road, yeah, pain in the ass...) to effectively cure AIDS? Interesting...