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Medicine Science

Scientists Report a Second Person Has Been Cured of HIV (reuters.com) 139

Scientists have reported that an HIV-positive man in Britain has been cleared of the AIDS virus after he received a bone marrow transplant from an HIV resistant donor. This is the second known adult worldwide to be cleared of HIV; the first was an American man, Timothy Brown, who became known as the Berlin patient when he underwent similar treatment in Germany more than a decade ago. According to HIV experts, Brown is still HIV-free. Reuters reports: Almost three years after receiving bone marrow stem cells from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that resists HIV infection - and more than 18 months after coming off antiretroviral drugs - highly sensitive tests still show no trace of the man's previous HIV infection. The case is a proof of the concept that scientists will one day be able to end AIDS, the doctors said, but does not mean a cure for HIV has been found. The man is being called "the London patient," in part because his case is similar to the first known case of a functional cure of HIV.

"There is no virus there that we can measure. We can't detect anything," said Ravindra Gupta, a professor and HIV biologist who co-led a team of doctors treating the man. Gupta described his patient as "functionally cured" and "in remission," but cautioned: "It's too early to say he's cured." Gupta, now at Cambridge University, treated the London patient when he was working at University College London. The man had contracted HIV in 2003, Gupta said, and in 2012 was also diagnosed with a type of blood cancer called Hodgkin's Lymphoma. In 2016, when he was very sick with cancer, doctors decided to seek a transplant match for him. "This was really his last chance of survival," Gupta told Reuters in an interview. The donor -- who was unrelated -- had a genetic mutation known as "CCR5 delta 32," which confers resistance to HIV. The transplant went relatively smoothly, Gupta said, but there were some side effects, including the patient suffering a period of "graft-versus-host" disease - a condition in which donor immune cells attack the recipient's immune cells.

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Scientists Report a Second Person Has Been Cured of HIV

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  • HIV != AIDS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by crvtec ( 921881 ) on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @05:34AM (#58218080) Homepage
    The article gets it wrong too, but HIV is not the same as AIDS. Both patients were 'cured' of HIV (not AIDS). https://www.webmd.com/hiv-aids... [webmd.com]
    • Neither the summary nor article says anyone was cured of AIDS.

      It says he "has been cleared of the AIDS virus." HIV is definitely the AIDS virus. The article and summary are accurate.

    • You don't have AIDS anymore if you've been cleared of HIV...
      • You don't have AIDS anymore if you've been cleared of HIV...

        AIDS is a condition caused by HIV. HIV kills the immune system, even if it's cleared out, you will still have AIDS if you have no functional immune system. But it might not be contagious.

        • Kinda, you'll be in a weakened state like you'd be if you'd been through a bought of the measles, but without HIV to kill them off, your lymphocytes will recover in a matter of months.
    • Your post is akin to saying "He wasn't cured of the common cold. He was cured of rhinovirus." A technically correct but utterly useless distinction for laypeople. AIDS is the disease caused by HIV. While it is possible to have the virus in you without it having progressed to a full outbreak that really only matters in medical terms.
      • by Win0ver ( 613215 )
        No, the distinction is important, as having HIV does NOT mean you have AIDS. And no one who has AIDS has ever been cured, unlike HIV.
        • And while it is in medical terms important I think you will find that you are wasting your time. Most people equate HIV and AIDS. There isn't much you can do about it. And making a stink about it on /. where people do understand the difference wont help.
      • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        That's not really true. A cold is a disease, caused by a virus. AIDS is syndrome, not a disease. HIV disables your immune system, then various opportunistic infections all try to be the first to kill you. The latter is AIDS.

        Clearing HIV is relatively simple compared to curing all the various infections an AIDS patient might have, never mind fixing all the damage they've done.

        • by sjames ( 1099 )

          If you get rid of the HIV, their immune system will recover and kill the other infections. They may well have lasting effects from their time with AIDS.

          • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            Sadly, that's not usually way it works. Your immune system is much more successful at eliminating (or containing) infections that are not well established.

        • Ask someone who isn't familiar with medical terms what a syndrome is. At best they will tell you its a fancy word for disease. Again, you are wasting your time on pedantry.
    • Magic Johnson (no pun intended) has been living with HIV since the early 90s.
      • Magic Johnson (no pun intended) has been living with HIV since the early 90s.

        Because he's filthy rich, and direct injections of liquified cash cured him.

  • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @06:02AM (#58218118)

    Around 1990 we had claims of a "cure in 5...10 years" by actual experts. Now, 30 years later, we actually have an experimental cure that worked two times and both times it was a purely accidental side-effect of a very risky cancer treatment. Hence we still do not have a cure that is worth the risks. Human hubris at work.

    • Historically(if Wikipedia is to be believed)
      HIV started out being studied in USA the 80s because patents where showing signs of both Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia(rare) and skin cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma(also rare). Each escalation of the study went from one thing to another, where the abbreviation even changed from GRID(Gay Related Immune Decency) to 4H(homosexuals, heroin users, hemophiliacs, and Haitians.) to AIDS once the cause and effect was studied enough to study the 'healthy population'.

      I th

    • Who would've thought that a rapidly mutating retrovirus which directly attacks the immune system itself would've been so hard to make a vaccine for? It is because of HIV and AIDS research that we have most of the antivirals and antifungals we do today.
  • by lobiusmoop ( 305328 ) on Tuesday March 05, 2019 @06:25AM (#58218162) Homepage

    Hodgkins is a cancer in the immune/lymph system, which is a whole separate plumbing system to the blood stream. If it was in the blood stream it would be leukemia.

    (21 years cancer free now, yay).

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Hodgkins is a cancer in the immune/lymph system, which is a whole separate plumbing system to the blood stream. If it was in the blood stream it would be leukemia.

      (21 years cancer free now, yay).

      Congrats.

      But damn, dude, you're using your second chance at life to be a grammar pedant to BeauHD.

      Either aim higher, or do us all a favor and use actual explosive devices.

    • Except white blood cells are indeed blood cells. Lymphoma is a blood cancer.

      Lymphocytes are white blood cells. Leukemia translates to too many lymphocytes in the bloodstream and lymphoma translates to lymphocyte tumors. That means "leukemia" is too many white blood cells in the blood stream and "lymphoma" is white blood cell tumors.

      So you are correct in saying that lymphomas are a cancer of the immune system, but incorrect in saying they're not blood cancers. They most definitely are. They are blood cell ca

      • Just to expand and add a few points:

        The first line of the Wikipedia entry for lymphoma: "Lymphoma is a group of blood cancers that develop from lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell)."

        The immune system is not a "separate plumbing system to the blood stream." All blood cells, including red blood cells and white blood cells (WBCs), originate in the bone marrow and migrate out to the blood stream. The immune system is comprised of many layers, but white blood cells are what we most commonly refer to as the i

  • This gets me thinking about J.D Shapely from Mona Lisa Overdrive. Even though it seems much less intrusive to donate blood instead of blood marrow.
  • Even the common chicken pox virus has learned to hide in lymph glands and re-emerge as shingles. Given the viral load caused by HIV, it is possible it too has learned to lurk in many places.

    But, even if that is true, this is a good great advancement.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      That's why it's important that the donor bone marrow has an anti-HIV mutation. You're correct that HIV is pretty good at hiding out, but it needs to reproduce in T cells. If you replace all the T cells with ones that HIV can't infect, it can't come back.

  • Don't do stuff that gives you AIDS.

    • by sconeu ( 64226 )

      You mean things like receive a blood transfusion?

  • Someone claims to have a cure to cancer or AIDS. Usually an overzealous reporter. Actual facts, it's some quirky edge case or someone looking for money.

    I don't believe anyone has a cure to anything until they're selling the pill.

  • They haven't found a cure for the careless stupidity that lets people catch HIV in the first place. People that dumb are going to find a way to get themselves killed if they're that uncautious whether you cure their HIV or not.
    • They haven't found a cure for the careless stupidity that lets people catch HIV in the first place. People that dumb are going to find a way to get themselves killed if they're that uncautious whether you cure their HIV or not.

      You mean "careless stupidity" like my childhood friend who got it from a blood transfusion after a car accident in which he was a passenger? Worthless sacks of shit like you make me sick.

    • by ffkom ( 3519199 )
      There may be people who get infected out of mindless stupidity, but there are also plenty who are infected without doing anything stupid, but just happen to have received medicine for hemophilia at the time it was unsafe, or lived a mundane sex life with a partner who happened to seek sexual adventures also elsewhere and so on...

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