BBC: Second patient cured of HIV, say doctors

[Cooked Crack]

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Adam Castillejo is still free of the virus more than 30 months after stopping anti-retroviral therapy.

 

He was not cured by the HIV drugs, however, but by a stem-cell treatment he received for a cancer he also had, the Lancet HIV journal reports.

 

The donors of those stem cells have an uncommon gene that gives them, and now Mr Castillejo, protection against HIV.

 

In 2011, Timothy Brown, the "Berlin Patient" became the first person reported as cured of HIV, three and half years after having similar treatment.

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Stem-cell transplants appear to stop the virus being able to replicate inside the body by replacing the patient's own immune cells with donor ones that resist HIV infection.

 

Adam Castillejo - the now 40-year-old "London Patient" who has decided to go public with his identity - has no detectable active HIV infection in his blood, semen or tissues, his doctors say.

 

It is now a year after they first announced he was clear of the virus and he still remains free of HIV.

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Lead researcher Prof Ravindra Kumar Gupta, from the University of Cambridge, told BBC News: "This represents HIV cure with almost certainty.

 

"We have now had two and a half years with anti-retroviral-free remission.

 

"Our findings show that the success of stem-cell transplantation as a cure for HIV, first reported nine years ago in the Berlin Patient, can be replicated."

 

But it will not be a treatment for the millions of people around the world living with HIV.

 

The aggressive therapy was primarily used to treat the patients' cancers, not their HIV.

 

And current HIV drugs remain very effective, meaning people with the virus can live long and healthy lives.

 

Prof Gupta said: "It is important to note that this curative treatment is high-risk and only used as a last resort for patients with HIV who also have life-threatening haematological malignancies.

 

 

 

[Springfield]

That’s amazing.  Please let it not be $10,000 a treatment.

[NoCalMike]

About time Magic Johnson shared the cure.

[Momma There Goes That Man]

Isn't this the opening 5 minutes of I Am Legend?

[ExoDus84]

23 minutes ago, NoCalMike said:

About time Magic Johnson shared the cure.

 

There's always been a cure of HIV.

 

It's called money.

22 minutes ago, Momma There Goes That Man said:

Isn't this the opening 5 minutes of I Am Legend?

 

Hope not. I'd be concerned if some dude was ripping around my town in a 2007 GT500 mustang, holding an M4 rifle out the window.

[China]

33 minutes ago, Springfield said:

That’s amazing.  Please let it not be $10,000 a treatment.

 

Looks like it won't be a commonly available treatment at all.  From the article:

 

Quote

But it will not be a treatment for the millions of people around the world living with HIV.

 

The aggressive therapy was primarily used to treat the patients' cancers, not their HIV.

 

And current HIV drugs remain very effective, meaning people with the virus can live long and healthy lives.

 

Prof Gupta said: "It is important to note that this curative treatment is high-risk and only used as a last resort for patients with HIV who also have life-threatening haematological malignancies.

 

You only get the treatment if you have both AIDS and cancer.

[Momma There Goes That Man]

20 minutes ago, ExoDus84 said:

Hope not. I'd be concerned if some dude was ripping around my town in a 2007 GT500 mustang, holding an M4 rifle out the window.

 

Just give it a few years...

[DCSaints_fan]

1 hour ago, Springfield said:

That’s amazing.  Please let it not be $10,000 a treatment.

if it is a one time cost, that is dirt cheap

Edited March 10, 2020 by DCSaints_fan

[Springfield]

53 minutes ago, China said:

 

Looks like it won't be a commonly available treatment at all.  From the article:

 

 

You only get the treatment if you have both AIDS and cancer.

I mean, it’s worth researching though and perhaps finding a cure.  It would be great if we could continue to improve our stem cell treatments because it seems like stem cells solve something new all the time.

[Malapropismic Depository]

It's illegal to claim that you can cure a disease.

[ExoDus84]

2 hours ago, Momma There Goes That Man said:

 

Just give it a few years...

 

Now that I think about, that sounds like a typical tuesday in Texas. 

[China]

Scientists have possibly cured HIV in a woman for the first time

 

Following a cutting-edge treatment four years ago, the “New York patient” is now off of HIV medication and remains “asymptomatic and healthy,” researchers say.
 

An American research team reported that it has possibly cured HIV in a woman for the first time. Building on past successes, as well as failures, in the HIV-cure research field, these scientists used a cutting-edge stem cell transplant method that they expect will expand the pool of people who could receive similar treatment to several dozen annually.

 

Their patient stepped into a rarified club that includes three men whom scientists have cured, or very likely cured, of HIV. Researchers also know of two women whose own immune systems have, quite extraordinarily, apparently vanquished the virus.

 

Carl Dieffenbach, director of the Division of AIDS at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of multiple divisions of the National Institutes of Health that funds the research network behind the new case study, told NBC News that the accumulation of repeated apparent triumphs in curing HIV “continues to provide hope.” 

 

“It’s important that there continues to be success along this line,” he said.

 

In the first case of what was ultimately deemed a successful HIV cure, investigators treated the American Timothy Ray Brown for acute myeloid leukemia, or AML. He received a stem cell transplant from a donor who had a rare genetic abnormality that grants the immune cells that HIV targets natural resistance to the virus. The strategy in Brown’s case, which was first made public in 2008, has since apparently cured HIV in two other people. But it has also failed in a string of others. 

 

This therapeutic process is meant to replace an individual’s immune system with another person’s, treating their cancer while also curing their HIV. First, physicians must destroy the original immune system with chemotherapy and sometimes irradiation. The hope is that this also destroys as many immune cells as possible that still quietly harbor HIV despite effective antiretroviral treatment. Then, provided the transplanted HIV-resistant stem cells engraft properly, new viral copies that might emerge from any remaining infected cells will be unable to infect any other immune cells. 

 

It is unethical, experts stress, to attempt an HIV cure through a stem cell transplant — a toxic, sometimes fatal procedure — in anyone who does not have a potentially fatal cancer or other condition that already makes them a candidate for such risky treatment. 

 

Click on the link for the full article