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HIV patient possibly cured in Berlin.
So, I'm cross-posting this from TotD, because it's totally awesome.
This patient in Berlin had leukemia and HIV, which was treated with high-dose chemotherapy, which in turn almost entirely eradicated his white T4 cell count. In order to counter this, he was dosed with a large amount of immunosuppressants, received a stem cell injection, was dosed again with immunosuppressants 13 days later, and his leukemia was gone. So was his HIV.
Turns out his stem cell donor was a part of the 1% of the population inherently immune to HIV due to a lack of a certain cell receptor. Since the HIV could not replicate while immunosuppresants were in the bloodstream (the virus is only coded for during immune responses), and the patient's own T4 cells were more or less completely wiped out, none of his new immune cells could harbor the virus.
The guy went through hell and back, but he no longer has leukemia. Or, doctors think, HIV. This news is huge.
http://www.aidsmap.com/page/1577949/
This patient in Berlin had leukemia and HIV, which was treated with high-dose chemotherapy, which in turn almost entirely eradicated his white T4 cell count. In order to counter this, he was dosed with a large amount of immunosuppressants, received a stem cell injection, was dosed again with immunosuppressants 13 days later, and his leukemia was gone. So was his HIV.
Turns out his stem cell donor was a part of the 1% of the population inherently immune to HIV due to a lack of a certain cell receptor. Since the HIV could not replicate while immunosuppresants were in the bloodstream (the virus is only coded for during immune responses), and the patient's own T4 cells were more or less completely wiped out, none of his new immune cells could harbor the virus.
The guy went through hell and back, but he no longer has leukemia. Or, doctors think, HIV. This news is huge.
http://www.aidsmap.com/page/1577949/
Comments
I may be tempted to stay my course and get my Biology degree thanks to this.
I mean, if we can just find people in the population that are resistant to HIV, get marrow transplants...There won't be enough for everyone initially, but eventually they'll start creating more blood cells that are immune to HIV, won't they? So, if enough people get transplants initially, we'll have a growing bank of HIV-immune people who can make even more transplants.
Now, SCNT could fix the MHCC issue. But HIV still won't be like the clap. You won't be able to take a pill and have that shit clear up.No, they won't. Read about induced pluripotent adult stem cells.
Need to review stems. This is not my field.
Oh sorries, you edited.
...
Also, HIV uses more than one receptor. They can be CXCR4 or CCR5 tropic and there is also evidence that suggests a very small portion of infection occurs without either receptor (though it is very inefficient). This means that this patient can be reinfected by a virus with a different tropism. This treatment also doesn't address the latent virus that all HIV infected individuals have. Just because the latent cells haven't experienced the proper trigger does not mean they will not produce HIV at a later point in time. And if they did then they could just switch to the CXCR4 tropism.
It'd be interesting to see if they've tried to reactivate cells from a sample instead of just sorting for receptors as a measure of infection. I need to go hunt down the paper and read it because I'd like to know what they looked for in the brain tissue as well, as it isn't uncommon to see neurological side effects with HIV infection.