London patient might be second to be cured of HIV
Source: CNN
A second person has experienced sustained remission from HIV-1, according to a case study to be published Tuesday in the journal Nature. Effectively, some scientists believe that the "London patient" has been cured of the viral infection, which affects close to 37 million people worldwide.
The new case report comes more than 10 years after the first case, known as the "Berlin patient." Both patients were treated with stem cell transplants from donors who carried a rare genetic mutation, known as CCR5-delta 32, that made them resistant to HIV. The London patient has been in remission for 18 months since he stopped taking antiretroviral drugs.
"By achieving remission in a second patient using a similar approach, we have shown that the Berlin Patient was not an anomaly and that it really was the treatment approaches that eliminated HIV in these two people," said Ravindra Gupta, lead author of the study and a professor in University College London's Division of Infection and Immunity.
Gupta added that the method used is not appropriate for all patients but offers hope for new treatment strategies, including gene therapies. He and his colleagues will continue to monitor the man's condition, as it is still too early to say that he has been cured of HIV.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/04/health/hiv-remission-london-patient-study-bn/index.html
MattP
(3,304 posts)Response to brooklynite (Original post)
Freelancer This message was self-deleted by its author.
LisaL
(44,974 posts)So not sure what it is you find unbelievable.
Massacure
(7,526 posts)Per the article,
Despite various attempts by scientists using the same approach, Brown had remained the only person cured of HIV until the new London patient.
Scientist very much did try over the past 10 years to replicate their success with the first patient... and failed.
rusty quoin
(6,133 posts)how long will it take to cure AIDS. He said probably 10 years or more. We all gasped. We couldnt believe how long it would take. So now, I can see 10 more years or more.
Im not in the same field now that I studied then, but saw a documentary about how those who persons who survived the Black Death passed on genes which are ones to fight HIV.
Im guessing it takes a lot of time to find those with the same immunity and it goes on from there. They have to agree to it first.
Midnightwalk
(3,131 posts)Gives more details on the difficulty of getting this to work a second time, some hints of how this might get developed into more general treatments and some of the limitations.
[link:https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/health/aids-cure-london-patient.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage|]