A Cure For HIV?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Science
And as with many potential cures, it appears to have been discovered by chance.
The startling case of an AIDS patient who underwent a bone marrow transplant to treat leukemia is stirring new hope that gene-therapy strategies on the far edges of AIDS research might someday cure the disease.The patient, a 42-year-old American living in Berlin, is still recovering from his leukemia therapy, but he appears to have won his battle with AIDS. Doctors have not been able to detect the virus in his blood for more than 600 days, despite his having ceased all conventional AIDS medication. Normally when a patient stops taking AIDS drugs, the virus stampedes through the body within weeks, or days.
The breakthrough appears to be that Dr. [Gero] Hütter, a soft-spoken hematologist who isn’t an AIDS specialist, deliberately replaced the patient’s bone marrow cells with those from a donor who has a naturally occurring genetic mutation that renders his cells immune to almost all strains of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
This development is particularly important because current antiretroviral therapies are incredibly costly and the virus eventually mutates and necessitates more powerful drugs with even stronger side effects.
And even though the epidemic has been stemmed somewhat in the United States, developing countries are being hit hard because of a mixture of prevention ignorance and lack of funding to get the drugs necessary to help fight the spread. In fact, 2.7 million new cases were reported last year, and about 2 million people died.
In any event, it looks like gene therapy could usher in a new generation of cures.
Fingers crossed.
This entry was posted on Saturday, November 8th, 2008 and is filed under Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 8th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Amazing. Crossing my fingers as well.
November 8th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
This is a crapshoot. Based on one patient that just happened to have a donor that had this mutation. Gene therapy, which hasn’t worked well with well-researched single-point mutation diseases like cystic fibrosis, won’t be usable for a long time. Twenty years from now, if science is actually funded, this might work. Possibly.
So I ask, is it journalistically responsible to report on medical “breakthroughs?”
November 10th, 2008 at 9:39 am
If you’re going to flame, at least get your facts straight. The patient didn’t “just happened to have a donor that had this mutation”. It was by design. The mutation is a known protection against HIV and was sought out by Dr Hutter. In reading through your inane response, it’s obvious that you’re just another in the long line of know nothing, ignorant morons who spout gibberish out of their asses and pass it off as some form of informed opinion.
Here’s some advice: Read up, shut up, get informed, before you show yourself to be a moron again.
November 10th, 2008 at 10:25 am
The crucible to medical research in the 21st century will be gene-delivery systems that can transfect multiple cells and tissues in the body, bringing DNA directly into the nucleus of people with congenital disorders and repairing the genome without error. This is an extremely difficult task, 20 years may be wishful thinking
We know what causes most genetic diseases, we just cant package and deliver the DNA to repair the disease right now. It isn’t unique to AIDS, although AIDS may be easier to cure this way because it is a blood-bourne disease, and it would be easier to give synthetic viruses (perhaps attenuated HIV virus!) filled with the “healthy” DNA, which could edit out the HIV genes from T-Cell genomes.
November 10th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Jimmy the Dhimmi:
What does the first part of your post have to do with HIV? It sounds like you’re referring more to disorders such as autism.
As you can see from the article above, the patient in Germany had HIV eradicated from his body via a bone marrow transplant with cells which carried a specific mutation. Obviously a severe surgery to be sure, but why could this not be replicated in some more benign way to achieve the same end? My sources in the scientific community indicate it can and will be done and the delivery vector will be the attenuated HIV virus (or similar) you reference.
December 27th, 2008 at 12:58 am
You can’t judge from one patient’s report. Please give full detailed proof. Scientists and Researchers have told that there are no medicines for the people who suffered from HIV. There are some medicines which prevents you from the HIV.