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Doctors claim they have effectively been able to remove a patient's HIV infection by giving him a bone marrow transplant for the leukaemia from which he was also suffering. Skip related content
Related photos / videos Bone marrow 'cure' for HIV The transplant using stem cells from a donor with natural genetic resistance to the Aids virus has left the 42-year-old HIV patient, an American living in Berlin, free of infection for nearly two years.
Dr Gero Hutter and Thomas Schneider of the Clinic for Gastroenterology, Infections and Rheumatology of the Berlin Charite hospital said the team sought a bone marrow donor who had a genetic mutation known to help the body resist Aids infection.
The mutation affects a receptor, a cellular doorway, called CCR5 that the Aids virus uses to get into the cells it infects.
When they found a donor with the mutation, they used that bone marrow to treat the patient. Following the transplant, the patient's leukaemia and HIV disappeared.
"As of today, more than 20 months after the successful transplant, no HIV can be detected in the patient," the clinic said in a statement.
"We performed all tests, not only with blood but also with other reservoirs," Dr Schneider said. "But we cannot exclude the possibility that it's still there."
The researchers, however, stressed that this would never become a standard treatment for HIV.
Bone marrow stem cell transplants are rigorous and dangerous and require the patient to first have his or her own bone marrow completely destroyed.
Patients risk death from even the most minor infections because they have no immune system until the stem cells can grow and replace their own.
HIV has no cure, but cocktails of drugs can keep the virus suppressed, sometimes to undetectable levels. Research shows the virus never disappears - it lurks in so-called reservoirs throughout the body.
The CCR5 mutation is found in about 3 per cent of Europeans, the researchers said.
They said the study suggests that gene therapy, a highly experimental technology, might someday be used to help treat patients with HIV.
Source Yahoo
Got to be good news for those suffering from HIV.
Related photos / videos Bone marrow 'cure' for HIV The transplant using stem cells from a donor with natural genetic resistance to the Aids virus has left the 42-year-old HIV patient, an American living in Berlin, free of infection for nearly two years.
Dr Gero Hutter and Thomas Schneider of the Clinic for Gastroenterology, Infections and Rheumatology of the Berlin Charite hospital said the team sought a bone marrow donor who had a genetic mutation known to help the body resist Aids infection.
The mutation affects a receptor, a cellular doorway, called CCR5 that the Aids virus uses to get into the cells it infects.
When they found a donor with the mutation, they used that bone marrow to treat the patient. Following the transplant, the patient's leukaemia and HIV disappeared.
"As of today, more than 20 months after the successful transplant, no HIV can be detected in the patient," the clinic said in a statement.
"We performed all tests, not only with blood but also with other reservoirs," Dr Schneider said. "But we cannot exclude the possibility that it's still there."
The researchers, however, stressed that this would never become a standard treatment for HIV.
Bone marrow stem cell transplants are rigorous and dangerous and require the patient to first have his or her own bone marrow completely destroyed.
Patients risk death from even the most minor infections because they have no immune system until the stem cells can grow and replace their own.
HIV has no cure, but cocktails of drugs can keep the virus suppressed, sometimes to undetectable levels. Research shows the virus never disappears - it lurks in so-called reservoirs throughout the body.
The CCR5 mutation is found in about 3 per cent of Europeans, the researchers said.
They said the study suggests that gene therapy, a highly experimental technology, might someday be used to help treat patients with HIV.
Source Yahoo
Got to be good news for those suffering from HIV.
