Two Aust. HIV+ Men Cleared of the Virus?...

[Rockhopper]

Scientists have uncovered two new cases of HIV patients in whom the virus has become undetectable.


The two patients, both Australian men, became apparently HIV-free after receiving stem cells to treat cancer. They are still on antiretroviral therapy (ART) “as a precaution”, but those drugs alone could not be responsible for bringing the virus to such low levels, says David Cooper, director of the Kirby Institute at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, who led the discovery. A year ago, a different group of researchers had reported cases with a similar outcome.

If this is possible then it's good news for HIV infected people. The yellow dots in the above pic is the virus on a Leucocyte, scanned electron microscope pic.

From Here.

Tim.

[Agartha]

I'll read it tomorrow.........posting to find later.
  

[Lenzabi]

So, not the usual Big Pharma tricks of treating with their noxious potions and pills, but stem cell research pays off. Now to see how much that costs, likely not quickly adopted here in the US as well, we have religious nutters who think HIV/AIDS is God's Punishment. They even now spread a belief that spermatic enzymes for getting into the egg is what destroys the immune system in gay men. That is right, they actually now seem to think it is the sperm of a lover eating away at your colon and immune system is what causes it, and that their version of God willed it so.

But yeah, I had a feeling that the discovery that stem cells can be used to reset, or repair, or fix many things. Even regrow teeth. Organs that will not be rejected as they are still your own cells.

[Kaere]

I could be recalling incorrectly, but I read an article recently about a woman who they thought was all clear of the virus and she stopped taking the meds (supervised of course) and the virus came back. I'll try to find the article to post it as I'm sure it has better details than my random recollections.

[Agartha]

Yes, Kaere, I remember it too. So far 5 people were cleared of the HIV virus and 2 relapsed and are on drugs treatment again. Two others, including a baby, are being monitored carefully but are still on medication.

So far only 1 person in the whole world has been effectively cured of HIV by receiving a bone marrow transplant from a person who is totally resistant to the virus (a gene called CCR5 which produces faulty proteins that doesn't not allow the HIV virus to latch onto). The man is known in the scientific community as 'The Berlin man'.

The major barrier to finding a cure is that the virus lays dormant in tissues of the gut, lymph system, bloodstream and elsewhere, but reawakens and begins invading blood cells if patients halt ART. The best hope is using drugs such as vorinostat that completely "flush out" the virus so it can be killed outright with antiretroviral drugs. Trials with these treatments are currently under way in several laboratories around the world. ( LINK )

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