Accidentally Curing AIDS?
Not strictly a political post this time, I know outside of In One Ear… Out The Other’s realm, but news that should make the world rejoice.
It appears that a German Dr. Hutter (I will make him famous, you will know his name) accidentally cured AIDS by providing a bone marrow transplant from an individual naturally resistant to the AIDS virus. From the Wall Street Journal article:
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.
“I was very surprised,” said the doctor, Gero Hütter.
The breakthrough appears to be that Dr. 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.
I’m far from a medical expert but it seems to me that if natural immunities to AIDS could be transferred via this very crude form of gene therapy, I would imagine others could as well.
-Marc-
So have a lot of other people.
Start here: virusmyth.net
The guy had leukemia AND aids?
Ouch.
This could be a real world example of John McCarthy’s “Doctor’s Dilemma”: someone has the ability to cure people but only a limited amount of time and resources . . . and there are many sick people.
More likely the leukemia was caused by the AIDS. Recent studies have shown how benign cancer mutation occur very frequently in the human organism, but usually the immune system kills those cells very fast, before the cancer becomes malignant. With an immune system much weakened by HIV, it’s not surprising that the guy got leukemia.
Yes. Its easy enough to do, if you can find someone who is a donor match (which is really hard), that has the resistance (which is really uncommon), and is willing to undergo donating bone marrow (which is painful). Not exactly a viable option for the millions of AIDS sufferers.
anon,
I’d say this is where stem cells from aids immune individuals comes in.
It would also be very viable to take the patient’s own cells, create stem cells from them with the AIDS resistance gene, and transplant those stem cells back into the patient. That could provide a universal cure (albeit very expensive) if scientists can identify the gene responsible for AIDS resistance.
A possible AIDS cure and Obama elected President… It’s a pretty good week for the world.
Kate: They have been working on that very methodology for a few years now at the U. of Colo. Med School. The problem appears to be one of, as noted, gene identification.
To the AIDS-denial guy, an article refuting “virusmyth.net”:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v406/n6791/full/406015a0.html
For more, simply read the “AIDS Denial” section of the wikipedia article on HIV. Look at the “Proof HIV leads to AIDS” section in the bibliography.
Not to be contrary, but the urban legend you’re spreading kills people. Please stop.
Similar things have happened with Hepatitis C which is thought to be cronic and incurable. They call it more or less permanent remission though most of the medical community is still waiting to absolutely confirm this. I love to see these kind of reports.
I know a better cure and much less expensive. We need to Stop aiding aids! Stop preaching safe sex and start preaching abstinance!
Any advancement in AIDS research is incredible. It might not cure everyone now, but could be the next step to the cure.
Baby steps are still steps forward, and are encouraging.
Do people really want AIDS to be cured?
And when I mean people I am talking about the Pharmaceuticals industry.
We’ve known about certain people being resistant to HIV for about 12 years or so now. The percentage of the population is small; very small. And this patient received a bone marrow transplant. Matching donors to recipients is a tedious process, much more involved than a simply blood type match. The translant procedure is also VERY painful, even for the donor. The only hope to finding a widespread cure is to be able to duplicate the results artificially, such as by cloning the marrow or perhaps just the gene itself. Say perhaps if a pig could be altered to grow AIDS resistant bone marrow.
Treatment is only too expensive because our priorities aren’t to cure aids, but to capitalize on hamburger sales.
Hmm, its true that finding bone marrow to match someone is really hard (which is usually why a family member is used cause therein lies the best chance of a match)
But couldn’t in theory the marrow genetic makeup of a resistant person be duplicated in a lab and then find the immunity string and then put that into the HIV/AIDS infected persons?
I know that while it is true that most of the human genetic makeup is actually uncovered and we can actually prevent many of these diseases nowadays before we even conceive a child the part of the genetic makeup that revolves around the immune system is still shrouded somewhat in mist. So with that fact it comes down to if this is also in that mist or if we have uncovered it and just not known it yet
its great thing …. go on and create a new history
God cured that person.
Because Aids is a punishment for bad people from God! Only God can take Aids away from those bad people. Gays and Negroes have Aids, everybody knows that.
Hi mate…
it shows God is alive…
thanks…
It’s like research. When you are looking for something you can’t find it and when you are observing you find something you never expected. The extrordinary is all around us in the ordinary. I’ve been checking out this Green Recovery business, so I’ll pass it along here.
The program proposes to boost public investment (and leverage private capital through loan guarantees) in six energy efficiency and renewable energy strategies: retrofitting buildings to improve energy efficiency; expanding mass transit and freight rail; constructing “smart” electrical grid transmission systems; wind power; solar power; and next-generation biofuels.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/10/green_recovery_map.html
My idea was always to focus on Green Hospital development to help solve the health care crisis (in one ear and…I know). People act as if the crisis just started.
I see….
http://culturedecoded.wordpress.com/2008/11/09/gopandthepress/
Actually there are working on identifying the gene. Interestingly enough they believe that those who are resistant to AIDS are offspring of those who survived the Black Plague that rampaged through Europe a couple hundred years ago. Or at least it is the most visible in those people.
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Interesting. Good post.
The problem with gene therapy is that you’d need to replace the standard gene with the genetic mutation in all the body’s cells. As of right now, there’s no practical way to do this. I also don’t know how effective using adult stem cells as AIDS treatments would work, but it seems to be a good idea to try and test.
What I would find reassuring is that there is a natural mutation rendering humans immune to HIV. Hopefully, it will spread over centuries by sexual selection and one day, humans will be immune to the virus. Evolution can be our best friend… =)
This could be an incredible break-through if they’re able to duplicate this in other people suffering with HIV.
I hope this is the beginning of a definitive cure!
Community of Doctors normally reject such claims of instant cures. Naturally they are cautious. No single event can lead to the conclusion that cure has been found. The proof must be established. Consider the Harvard doctor who hypothesized angiogenesis in cancerous tumours was forced into banishment. He did manage to establish it after 25 years of hard work! However, this news is very exciting news and it is investigated positively rather than a threat to providers of current expensive treatments. . God bless such thoughtful pioneers.
Wow, what a miracle!
I read about this on Slashdot and it was mentioned that this operation has a mortality rate of 30%, also that there is currently no way to reproduce the resistant bone marrow other than in the donors spine.
While I think it’s amazing that there is now at least a slight possibility to cure HIV, I fear that this will never be an option for all those poor people infected people in sub-Saharan Africa.
P.S.: The transcription of the German Hütter, if you don’t have access to Umlauts is Huetter btw.
for “thetruth” also check out aidsmythexposed.com for the latest.
The “crazy” thing is that many have “a cure” when they stop drugs, get sleep, eat, drink clean water, and take vitamins and other supplements.
The AIDS test does not detect a virus, but a non-specific antibody. The test itself is a marker for poor health which can usually be corrected by a healthy lifestyle.
If this works, after intensive testing, then what now for the Fundies?! (‘President’ Sarah Failin, this means YOU!) If as they claim, ‘AIDS is God’s vengeance against gays’, then scientists will have beaten God at his own game. And once science truly creates artificial life, and perfects Artificial Intelligence (Prof. Stephen Hawking completing his Unified Field Theory, no doubt with data from the LHC finding the Higgs-Boson particle & showing what happened before Planck Time, will be the icing on the cake!), then on that day God will be out of a job.
See you outside that Job Centre, in the queue with all the other unemployed, God.
The drug Anvirzel has many folks in remission from HIV…some have gone from AIDS back to HIV+ status…then back to work.No genes, no degradation, no “hopes for future research”…just well.
Hmmm… I just have to love that comment relating Hep “C” to HIV. Two very different viral types.
i was interested in this post.thank you
i think this is a great thing not forgetting that God works in mysterious ways, i am definately going to pray about this because with God all is possible. thank you