Here Today... Gone To Hell!

BERLIN ? An American man who suffered from AIDS appears to have been cured of the disease 20 months after receiving a targeted bone marrow transplant normally used to fight leukemia, his doctors said Wednesday.

While researchers ? and the doctors themselves ? caution that the case might be no more than a fluke, others say it may inspire a greater interest in gene therapy to fight the disease that claims 2 million lives each year. The virus has infected 33 million people worldwide.

Dr. Gero Huetter said his 42-year-old patient, an American living in Berlin who was not identified, had been infected with the AIDS virus for more than a decade. But 20 months after undergoing a transplant of genetically selected bone marrow, he no longer shows signs of carrying the virus.

"We waited every day for a bad reading," Huetter said.

It has not come. Researchers at Berlin's Charite hospital and medical school say tests on his bone marrow, blood and other organ tissues have all been clean.

However, Dr. Andrew Badley, director of the HIV and immunology research lab at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., said those tests have probably not been extensive enough.

"A lot more scrutiny from a lot of different biological samples would be required to say it's not present," Badley said.

This isn't the first time marrow transplants have been attempted for treating AIDS or HIV infection. In 1999, an article in the journal Medical Hypotheses reviewed the results of 32 attempts reported between 1982 and 1996. In two cases, HIV was apparently eradicated, the review reported.

Huetter's patient was under treatment at Charite for both AIDS and leukemia, which developed unrelated to HIV.

As Huetter ? who is a hematologist, not an HIV specialist ? prepared to treat the patient's leukemia with a bone marrow transplant, he recalled that some people carry a genetic mutation that seems to make them resistant to HIV infection. If the mutation, called Delta 32, is inherited from both parents, it prevents HIV from attaching itself to cells by blocking CCR5, a receptor that acts as a kind of gateway.

"I read it in 1996, coincidentally," Huetter told reporters at the medical school. "I remembered it and thought it might work."

Roughly one in 1,000 Europeans and Americans have inherited the mutation from both parents, and Huetter set out to find one such person among donors that matched the patient's marrow type. Out of a pool of 80 suitable donors, the 61st person tested carried the proper mutation.

Before the transplant, the patient endured powerful drugs and radiation to kill off his own infected bone marrow cells and disable his immune system ? a treatment fatal to between 20 and 30 percent of recipients.

He was also taken off the potent drugs used to treat his AIDS. Huetter's team feared that the drugs might interfere with the new marrow cells' survival. They risked lowering his defenses in the hopes that the new, mutated cells would reject the virus on their own.

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases in the U.S., said the procedure was too costly and too dangerous to employ as a firstline cure. But he said it could inspire researchers to pursue gene therapy as a means to block or suppress HIV.

"It helps prove the concept that if somehow you can block the expression of CCR5, maybe by gene therapy, you might be able to inhibit the ability of the virus to replicate," Fauci said.

David Roth, a professor of epidemiology and international public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said gene therapy as cheap and effective as current drug treatments is in very early stages of development.

"That's a long way down the line because there may be other negative things that go with that mutation that we don't know about."

Even for the patient in Berlin, the lack of a clear understanding of exactly why his AIDS has disappeared means his future is far from certain.

"The virus is wily," Huetter said. "There could always be a resurgence."

maybe the world really is going to end in 2012  :o

But now we can die AIDS free. : ok:

as eddie Murphy said. Next disease will be, u stick your dick in and it explodes. :hihi:

HAHAHAHA...

Magic Johnson doesn't have aids anymore either.

hell i've been saying that for years now


what a time we live in.....

I know I guy who has been HIV pos since 1990. He still lives in NYC and is a fatass now. He has trouble with his diabetes but that's it.

When I was much younger, I got clean using Narcotics Anonymous.  Drug Addicts are prone to AIDS/HIV.  I knew ALOT of people with it, unfortunately.  I remember, though, that as time went on, they seemed to be outliving their doctor's expectations.  I've fallen out of touch with just about everyone, but wonder how many of them are doing now.....

I've read that they have been curing babies born with the virus, so it sounds like progress is being made :D

Did you leave him because he was turning into a fat ass?   :hihi:  Kidding...  I wonder if there are some misdiagnotions?  Is that word I just typed?  Oh well, you know what I mean.

Talk about moving up! :o
Maybe all of you didn't get that one. :hihi:
Anyway, I've heard about a cure for AIDS before but how does that help poor people, who are the majority of people who suffer from it? Anyway, here's to hopin'!

That'a a pretty big "jump" from EMT to doctor.  He musta been pretty "hot for teacher" to get through med school that quick. 

That was fast! Good to see that someone's been doing their Van Halen homework out there :hihi:

I also knew several men who died of AIDS in the early 90's. Most of them used drugs or were on AIDS medications.

My old friend never drank, used drugs, or took the AIDS drugs. My point is that he is living a healthy (and then some) lifestyle just like anybody else. I also know another guy who was in one of the first AIDS study groups from San Fransisco who is on AIDS drugs, takes terrific care of himself (heavy anti-oxidant diet, exercise, good sleep etc), and is in phenomenal shape. I think he is in his late 40's early 50's and will practically break your hand when you shake it. The majority of men in his original group have since died.

There was a report released a few months ago that said the average person who is diagnosed to be HIV positive in 2008 can expect to live an average of 49 years with proper medication.  Apparently it's not a death sentence anymore.

And that's exactly why barebacking has turned into such a trend among the gay community...
read an article about it a couple of weeks ago and it's a quite disturbing trend to say the least  :nervous:

Evolution is amazing

No matter the disease, some people are immune - even an epidemic wouldnt wipe out the species

Man 1 Nature 0