For the First Time in History Man Cured of HIV

From my friend, an HIV researcher:<p>Me: So is this genuine progress or breathless "science" journalism?<p>Him: A little of both to be honest. They basically replaced the man's entire bone stem cell population with a donor's to "cure" him. Which only works for one type of the virus. Which only works if you have an exact match for a bone marrow donor. Which only works if the exact match happens to have the super rare CCR5-32 mutation that makes them immune to that one type of virus. And you get to take immunosuppressants for the rest of your life because you have another dude's bone marrow in you. That being said, they cured HIV.

From my understanding HIV is a virus that infects immune cells and uses them to replicate. What happened is that this man had his immune system almost completely destroyed to defeat leukemia, and received stem cells from a donor with the mutation CCR5 known for its reduced risk of HIV infection.<p>Basically they destroyed the HIV's food source, and likely (at least temporarily) changed the man's new immune cells to the CCR5 variant in them that reduced the effectiveness of the HIV's ability to replicate.<p>Again, from my lay understanding, HIV changes its cell protein markers to avoid being attacked by immune cells. Often there are multiple HIV variants with different protein markers at one time active in a person.<p>IMO all but the 'newest' variant likely died of attrition, leaving one or two HIV protein marker variants that the new highly bolstered CCR5 mutant immune cells managed to latch onto and defeat.<p>I could be way wrong, but from my understanding this is the closest 'model' I can think of for how this would work. However, it's past my usual end-of-day so it may just be gibberish of an overtired mind.

A sample of one is not a cure.<p>There is a controlled Clincal Trial in the recruiting stage for participants surrounding CCR5 and its ability to block HIV.<p><a href="http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00842634?term=806383&#38;rank=1" rel="nofollow">http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00842634?term=806383&#...</a><p>Sad not to see that citation in every single one of the attached articles pounding the drum.

I think this is the original article: <a href="http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0802905" rel="nofollow">http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0802905</a>

I would like to see the a Medical Journal Article referenced here. Needs more testing, but certainly a great success, no matter what.

I have a friend of mine who moved away, so I now mostly keep in touch via his blog. I've known him since 1995, and he's been HIV positive since I've known him.<p>That said, within the past few years he was admitted to a similar clinical trial that has all but eradicated the presence of HIV in his system. For at least the past 6 months (it's under very close watch) there has been absolutely no detectable traces of HIV in his blood.<p>This is far outside my general sphere of knowledge, so I'm apt to speak unintelligently on the subject if I go into deeper detail, but it goes without saying that we're ecstatic for him, his family, and everybody else in the world plagued with the virus.<p>My biggest concern is the cost of the treatment. He's in trial, so it costs him effectively nothing, but as the treatment is perfected and rolled out to the masses, I have very little doubt that this will be affordable to only those with the very best insurance or those with very fat pockets.<p>I'll reserve judgement on the morality of that, as I do believe the presence of an expensive cure is infinitely better than the absence of a cure, but I'm just hopeful that they can manage a way to ensure that it does in fact work as they believe, and refine the process to such a degree that it becomes affordable.

This guy ended up with brain damage most likely from the treatment. If that's part of the cure then I'm not sure it's worth it.

<p><pre><code> 20th century: "HIV is a virus, and viral diseases cannot be cured." [1] 21st century: "Counterexample!" </code></pre> [1] My understanding of diseases is weak. I remember being told that bacterial diseases can be cured more or less trivially, but viral diseases can only be vaccinated against.

BTW, this isn't really the first time.<p>It's at least the third time.<p>There was a case where someone got a bone marrow transplant (because of cancer) and the donor was immune to HIV which cured the recipient.<p>Also some people are naturally immune.

I know someone with MS who went through something similar with encouraging results. I believe it was a mix of chemotherapy to suppress her own immune system followed by a bone marrow transplant from a healthy donor.

Nice to hear this kind of break through! But is it attached to some kind of controversy like stem-cell research/cloning? If new bone marrow is the cure, then the next step might be a cloned bone marrow so you don't need to have pills for ever! This might be opening a hole into advanced genetic research on cloning stuff!!!!

I hope this isn't similar to Assange getting bail and NASA discovering arsenic based life.