Two men with HIV have been off AIDS drugs for several months after receiving stem-cell transplants for cancer that appear to have cleared the virus from their bodies, researchers reported on Wednesday.
Both patients, who were treated in Boston and had been on long-term drug therapy to control their HIV, received stem-cell transplants after developing lymphoma, a type of blood cancer.
Since the transplants, doctors have been unable to find any evidence of HIV infection, Timothy Henrich of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston told an International AIDS Society conference in Kuala Lumpur.
While it is too early to say for sure that the virus has disappeared from their bodies altogether, one patient has now been off antiretroviral drug treatment for 15 weeks and the other for seven weeks.
Using stem-cell therapy is not seen as a viable option for widespread use, since it is extremely expensive, but the latest cases could open new avenues for fighting the disease, which infects about 34 million people worldwide.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2354712/Could-bone-marrow-transplants-cure-HIV-Two-men-procedure-stop-taking-medication-virus-disappears-blood.html
In 2006, an American in Germany was 'cured' of HIV by transplantation of bone marrow from a CCR5 D32 mutant individual for lymphoma. He was called the "berlin patient" and till date remains HIV negative.
The low occurence of this mutation in the human population is not conducive for such a strategy to be used on the approximately 34 million hiv+ individuals in the world.
I believe ongoing efforts aim at making this mutation ex vivo in stem cells so that they can be reintroduced into the patients body and the modified stem cells could repopulate the patient and hence make him non- symptomatic for HIV.
t's not so easy, a bone marrow transplant cannot be considered a cure.
As you know, there are more than 30 milion HIV positive and it is not possible at all to use a transplant to cure them (cost, danger...)
the greatest thing in that research (the Boston one) can be the discovery of a way that we can take in order to find the cure. So, not a cure but a means.
As I say in my article https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249008505_Boston._Due_pazienti_interrompono_cura_HIV_grazie_a_trapianto , now we can just start thinking about the correct pathway for erase HIV.
Article Boston. Due pazienti interrompono cura HIV grazie a trapianto
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Medicine
- Disease
- Infectious Diseases