Doctors Claim HIV-Positive Man Cured by Stem Cell Transplant

[AOEforme]

Originally Posted by Drolefille

It seems that many people are ignoring the fact that this is not just a stem-cell transplant, but a transplant from a matching donor with a rare genetic mutation that is known to increase HIV resistance.

The article you quoted was in the AMA Morning Brief today.


There are just so many problems with the treatment.

• You really don't want to completely wipe out the already failing immune system of a person already ravaged by opportunistic infections.
• Full body irradiation is incredible dangerous. It's not just something you "try".
• Trying to find a proper bone marrow match is difficult as is: trying to find one with the exact mutation is much more difficult, especially since 1% of Caucasians have the mutation and 0% of blacks do. Not all of these people will be able to donate, because they will have their own illnesses (autoimmune, cancer, etc.) too.

There's a million more complications, including getting bone marrow donations repeatedly from the few people who qualify for bone marrow donations. It would be awesome if this were the cure, but at least at the current moment, I just really don't think it is.

The cool thing, as the article stated, is that scientists know that they correctly understand how HIV/AIDS works. Consequently, even though this probably won't end up being a cure for AIDS, scientists may be closer because they know they're on the right track.

Like I said before, this would be amazing if it were true. There's just many more steps to look at and evaluate before anyone could consider it even possible as such.

Originally Posted by psusue

The whole article sounded like a House episode to me.

"Let's infect him with malaria to cure him of XYZ disease!"

And here everyone is going all Cuddy on this guy. For shame.

Close, but he was being treated for leukemia, not HIV. The BM transplant was done only for his leukemia.

Did they even say what kind of leukemia the guy was being treated for? I couldn't find it. If it was a T-cell leukemia, you could even hypothesize that THAT was what cured his HIV, rather than the transplant....