AIDS patient is reported cured

[Metah]

Works is a bit premature. HIV can hide in various cells for a very long time. Just because it works now does not mean that it he will stay virus free. (Like if he rejects the transplant or if the virus goes all mutatey again.) And there is still the chance that he could have enough of the virus in his system to infect others.

I've heard the word "cure" used for this disease before, and it has always been premature.

I guess so. But still, this might be the breakthrough needed.

[melbufrauma]

when i posted the thread i didnt intend it being "ZOMG CURE FOUND" was just sharing the news

[Tricen]

Then don't post "Cure for AIDS" >_>?

[Kiro]

I don't see "Cure for AIDS" anywhere in the title.

[Tricen]

Well fine >=(

[Ohaigaiz]

This is a treatment for AIDS, or something to help sustain it. Fuck this cure shit. Cure is when you can make something go away completely. Related to Septimus, this guy undoubtedly still has AIDS somewhere in his system. This is in no way a cure, doctors need to commit suicide.

[Jedimasta]

Well, considering the T-Cells being produced by the new bone marrow have the delta-32 anomaly, can't patients that were given these transfusions eventually donate their new bone marrow.
Oh they also found that this delta-32 has an upside and a downside. Upside you are pretty much unable to get infected with HIV and the downside is that you are much more susceptible to the West Nile Virus.

[Kiro]

Swellin' melons.

[Ramor]

Neither west nile or AIDS is particularly favorable, but somehow I'd rather have a life threatening disease "cured" now and face the consequences of another potentially deadly disease later versus keep one that I know will kill me basically.

Either way cool news, even if it doesn't stick even a short-term cure would be at least some sort of progress.

[Elites]

Fu*k aids and fu*k people who get/spread them, stay safe without mindless fuc**ng.

[Khajit]

Obama get's elected and then aids is cured?
Coincidence or something more?
I did see this treatment idea coming for a while.
the "new" issue concerning this is that the people whom discovered they were immune to HIV volunteered for testing to figure out why for the betterment of mankind and all that. The companies that did the testing have patents on those individual's genetic code while the person who is the source of it all apparently has no rights towards it(so instead of trying to use the info to save lives the companies are trying to hoard the genetic codes as property).

[Guitarman]

This is in no way a cure, doctors need to commit suicide.

Yes how dare they give people hope about a disease we've made little progress on. Damn them, damn them all.

[Jedimasta]

Obama get's elected and then aids is cured?
Coincidence or something more?
I did see this treatment idea coming for a while.
the "new" issue concerning this is that the people whom discovered they were immune to HIV volunteered for testing to figure out why for the betterment of mankind and all that. The companies that did the testing have patents on those individual's genetic code while the person who is the source of it all apparently has no rights towards it(so instead of trying to use the info to save lives the companies are trying to hoard the genetic codes as property).

I haven't read the article in a few days but I think this happened in Germany so, I'm guessing it's not a coincidence. And for the whole patent idea, it sounds about as real as Reagan created AIDS to kill African Americans. Yes we've known about Delta-32 for awhile but we can't just implement a gene defect world wide and even if we could we don't know what kind of side affects could occur.

This is a treatment for AIDS, or something to help sustain it. Fuck this cure shit. Cure is when you can make something go away completely. Related to Septimus, this guy undoubtedly still has AIDS somewhere in his system. This is in no way a cure, doctors need to commit suicide.

If it works like it should, it can actually be a cure. Since all the new immune cells getting pumped out of your bone marrow have this gene defect and HIV can't enter your T-Cells, the HIV particle dies off in your system. The only way it can live in the human body with this defect is the ability to abduct and utilize different cells to copy itself which we haven't even seen or documented yet.

[Ohaigaiz]

Neither west nile or AIDS is particularly favorable, but somehow I'd rather have a life threatening disease "cured" now and face the consequences of another potentially deadly disease later versus keep one that I know will kill me basically.

Seriously?

[Ohaigaiz]

Yes how dare they give people hope about a disease we've made little progress on. Damn them, damn them all.

Yes, how dare they give false hope to people because 99% of people with AIDS now will undoubtedly die because the treatment was too late/didn't work/was too expensive. It is in fact in no way a cure right now. So yeah, what you said was right. Damn them.

If it works like it should, it can actually be a cure. Since all the new immune cells getting pumped out of your bone marrow have this gene defect and HIV can't enter your T-Cells, the HIV particle dies off in your system. The only way it can live in the human body with this defect is the ability to abduct and utilize different cells to copy itself which we haven't even seen or documented yet.

I am in no way a doctor and am probably be completely wrong about this so it's purely guesstimate(someone correct me). The way stem cells work is they are a repair system for the body, not immune cells. They can divide and reproduce, but so can a lot of cells. I don't know anything about HIV but I'm guessing the bacteria ect attaches itself in some way or is able to fool cytotoxic cells. Stem cells are used in cures for leukemia. The guy who had AIDS also had leukemia, and what I'm thinking is that some of the AIDS bacteria attached itself to leukemia cells. When this happened, the stem cells attacked and killed off both. It killed the entire cell essentially. Leukemia is an actual cell, and AIDS is a leech(is leukemia?). I think that this is why there isn't a cure for AIDS yet. AIDS attaches itself to cells and therefore stem cells would kill the entire cell including the healthy part so you would basically die while being cured. There's a ton of different types of leukemia and this guy probably had a certain one.

This was typed over the period of an hour and I reread it like 5 times, seems like it was a bunch of jumbled thoughts. Please, can we get a doctor in the house?

[Jedimasta]

I am in no way a doctor and am probably be completely wrong about this so it's purely guesstimate(someone correct me). The way stem cells work is they are a repair system for the body, not immune cells. They can divide and reproduce, but so can a lot of cells. I don't know anything about HIV but I'm guessing the bacteria ect attaches itself in some way or is able to fool cytotoxic cells. Stem cells are used in cures for leukemia. The guy who had AIDS also had leukemia, and what I'm thinking is that some of the AIDS bacteria attached itself to leukemia cells. When this happened, the stem cells attacked and killed off both. It killed the entire cell essentially. Leukemia is an actual cell, and AIDS is a leech(is leukemia?). I think that this is why there isn't a cure for AIDS yet. AIDS attaches itself to cells and therefore stem cells would kill the entire cell including the healthy part so you would basically die while being cured. There's a ton of different types of leukemia and this guy probably had a certain one.

This was typed over the period of an hour and I reread it like 5 times, seems like it was a bunch of jumbled thoughts. Please, can we get a doctor in the house?

I can see your argument but it is flawed. Yes the HIV virus fools cytotoxic cells because it hides inside another immune cell. The HIV virus also doesn't "leech" onto other cells like I think you are trying to describe. When the patient received a bone marrow transplant from someone with the Delta-32 genetic defect, the new bone marrow, which is responsible for the production of all of our immune cells, began creating new T-cells with this defect. So while the virus was thriving with his old T-cells which are dead by now, his new T-cells couldn't be infected and further create and spread the virus within his body.

Of course you can say that the virus may be present in his body but if these doctors waited 600 days before releasing this information, I'm sure they tried every test on this guy that we have available to us.

Edit: Here's a link to the Health Blog on the Wall Street Journals website.
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/11/...tient-of-aids/
This line will probably help explaining it a little better.

As is common for bone marrow transplant recipients, the patient first had radiation and chemotherapy, which tends to kill off many of the immune cells that harbor HIV. After the transplant, the patient’s immune system was repopulated by cells created by the donor marrow.

[Rhinox]

Fu*k aids and fu*k people who get/spread them, stay safe without mindless fuc**ng.

you're retarded. The fact that you censor yourself is even further proof.

[thatwasnifty]

I am in no way a doctor and am probably be completely wrong about this so it's purely guesstimate(someone correct me). The way stem cells work is they are a repair system for the body, not immune cells. They can divide and reproduce, but so can a lot of cells. I don't know anything about HIV but I'm guessing the bacteria ect attaches itself in some way or is able to fool cytotoxic cells. Stem cells are used in cures for leukemia. The guy who had AIDS also had leukemia, and what I'm thinking is that some of the AIDS bacteria attached itself to leukemia cells. When this happened, the stem cells attacked and killed off both. It killed the entire cell essentially. Leukemia is an actual cell, and AIDS is a leech(is leukemia?). I think that this is why there isn't a cure for AIDS yet. AIDS attaches itself to cells and therefore stem cells would kill the entire cell including the healthy part so you would basically die while being cured. There's a ton of different types of leukemia and this guy probably had a certain one.

This was typed over the period of an hour and I reread it like 5 times, seems like it was a bunch of jumbled thoughts. Please, can we get a doctor in the house?

There is so much wrong in this post that I don't even know where to start. I was going to try to address each point, but it's better if I just summarize what happened. This guy had both HIV and leukemia. Leukemia is a cancer which causes blood cells to grow and replicate uncontrollably, so the patient effectively loses their immune system. HIV is a virus than infects T-cells (a type of white blood cell) and turns them into virus factories, which stops them from doing their job and ultimately kills them. This guy effectively didn't have a functioning immune system.

The doctors first performed chemotherapy on this person to kill the cancer cells, and then injected him with bone marrow from a compatible donor. Since the patient's own marrow would have been damaged by the cancer and the chemo, the transplant normally would have just allowed the patient to make new cells to replace the old ones. (Blood cells come from bone marrow.) However, HIV would have just infected these new cells and the patient would be back to square one, except that the donor had a genetic defect so that their blood cells do not create the receptor that HIV uses to infect cells. So now this patient can create new blood cells to replace those lost to cancer and HIV and they're resistant to the virus.

The stumbling blocks in the road to a cure are numerous. 1) As was mentioned above, the virus can incubate in cells for a long time, so they're not completely eliminated from the patient's body and could potentially infect more cells later. 2) Chemotherapy can be dangerous especially for someone with an already compromised immune system. 3) Bone marrow transplants are harsh procedures for both the donor and the recipient. 4) Finding an acceptable match is hard enough, and finding one who lacks the HIV receptor is much harder. 5) Given how HIV mutates, it could just find a new receptor to bind to. 6)Assuming stem cell research gets to the point where you can basically create your own bone marrow and engineer it to lack the HIV receptor (a few years away, maybe sooner if research becomes easier in the US), points 1 and 2 stand.

Also, one of the reasons that there isn't a cure for AIDS yet is that the virus mutates really quickly so it becomes resistant to treatments. Researchers get sent back to the drawing board often.

[Vajra]

Fu*k aids and fu*k people who get/spread them, stay safe without mindless fuc**ng.

!@%t s^*# f!#@ #@! )(#@ damn straight!

[Akucaen]

Well, considering the T-Cells being produced by the new bone marrow have the delta-32 anomaly, can't patients that were given these transfusions eventually donate their new bone marrow.
Oh they also found that this delta-32 has an upside and a downside. Upside you are pretty much unable to get infected with HIV and the downside is that you are much more susceptible to the West Nile Virus.

I'm too lazy to sign up for the NYT even if it is free. Is this what the article is about? I did a paper on this a few years ago and it was expected to be the holy-grail of HIV research. Very promising with people flat out resisting HIV strains and giving a vector to potentially attack the virus.