The First Man To Be Cured of HIV?

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Many scientists agree: we've already cured HIV in one man, albeit under very unique circumstances. The "Berlin patient," as he's known in the media, went to Germany in 2008 for treatment of leukemia; he was also HIV positive but had been on anti-retroviral treatment for four years, which left the virus undetectable in his blood ... German oncologist Gero Hütter treated his patient's cancerous white blood cells with radiation and then transplanted genetically modified stem cells that were immune to HIV. Since then, the Berlin patient has remained healthy and cancer-free, and amazingly the virus has remained undetectable for several years without any treatment.

...

This is only a functional cure; the virus could still be hiding in reservoirs in the body, as many scientists and doctors are quick to point out. But the fact that his body has suppressed the disease for so long is amazing and gives hope that gene therapy could cure HIV in others without highly toxic cancer treatment.

http://bigthink.com/ideas/25200

[The_Dude 1,142]

A potential cure for HIV, thats great. Oh wait, stem cells are bad, or at least that's what social conservatives keep telling us. Could it be that the social conservatives are wrong? I. Am. Shocked.

[JohnSmith2007 353]

A potential cure for HIV, thats great. Oh wait, stem cells are bad, or at least that's what social conservatives keep telling us. Could it be that the social conservatives are wrong? I. Am. Shocked.

Stem cells are good, embryonic stem cells are bad. If you want to bash conservatives at least get it right. (BTW, I have no problem with either kind)

While this may be a "cure" it seems a bit extreme considering drugs can now manage HIV.

[Amby 490]

It's amazing what the body can do to heal itself especially when given a bit of a boost. In the future I think stem cells are going to raise our life expectancy. More people need to get on board and see they're not bad and there's potential for so many cures when using them.

eta: I think it's Duke that has a program where they will store your baby's cord blood in their bank for free. You are on the list if you ever need it, but it will more than likely be cord blood from someone else.

Edited December 1, 2010 by Amby

[The_Dude 1,142]

Stem cells are good, embryonic stem cells are bad. If you want to bash conservatives at least get it right. (BTW, I have no problem with either kind)

While this may be a "cure" it seems a bit extreme considering drugs can now manage HIV.

Extreme? So you think it is reasonable to only expect to manage their disease? Should we just then give up on research efforts to find a cure? I am for any stem cell research that will yield cures to diseases that plague us.

[JohnSmith2007 353]

Extreme? So you think it is reasonable to only expect to manage their disease? Should we just then give up on research efforts to find a cure? I am for any stem cell research that will yield cures to diseases that plague us.

Wow, where did you get that from my comment? I meant that the procedure to radiate your entire body to kill off all white blood cells and then repopulate them with a marrow transplant is a very invasive, painful and dangerous procedure. With the new HIV drugs we have now people with AIDS lead reasonably normal lives. I know someone that has had this procedure for leukemia. It did cure him but he almost died from an infection after the radiation. In this case the cure is as bad as the disease.

I am and have always been in favor of stem cell research. Using the bodies own cells to cure you is a very slick idea.

[The_Dude 1,142]

Wow, where did you get that from my comment? I meant that the procedure to radiate your entire body to kill off all white blood cells and then repopulate them with a marrow transplant is a very invasive, painful and dangerous procedure. With the new HIV drugs we have now people with AIDS lead reasonably normal lives. I know someone that has had this procedure for leukemia. It did cure him but he almost died from an infection after the radiation. In this case the cure is as bad as the disease.

I am and have always been in favor of stem cell research. Using the bodies own cells to cure you is a very slick idea.

I apologize for the misunderstanding. I mistook "While this may be a "cure" it seems a bit extreme considering drugs can now manage HIV." as you implying that we should settle for managing the disease rather than continue to search for a cure. I too support stem cell research, but I support even embryonic stem cell research.

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I'll go a step further. If we find a man or woman with immunity to this disease, I'd support enslaving him/her and cloning him/her and then selling the clones as slaves on the open market so everyone can benefit from their DNA.

[Amby 490]

I found the thing on cord blood collection...

As their due date creeps closer, many pregnant women pack a go bag for the hospital: toothbrush, iPod, cute bringing-baby-home outfit. But in recent months, savvy mothers-to-be have started tucking in one more important item: a kit to collect and donate the blood in their babies' umbilical cord.

Cord blood is a noncontroversial source of stem cells, yet experts estimate that 99% of this potentially lifesaving resource gets thrown away postpartum. Unlike the stem cells in human embryos, which can morph into any kind of cell in the body, the stem cells in cord blood have their futures largely mapped out, as blood, brain, liver or heart-muscle cells, for example. But researchers have shown that cord-blood cells can be reprogrammed, and over the next decade, doctors hope to adapt these cells to treat heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and maybe neurodegenerative diseases too. Cord blood is already being used in therapy regimens for patients with cancer, sickle-cell anemia, immunodeficiency, marrow failure and genetic diseases that call for transplants.

Private cord-blood banks aggressively advertise their services to pregnant women and charge a bundle some $2,000 for initial processing and about $125 per year after that to store cord blood that can be used only by the donor's family. These for-profit companies lean heavily on the fear factor, encouraging parents to bank their baby's blood just in case a relative needs it one day.

Public banks, by contrast, make their contents available to anyone who is a close-enough match. (There are 10 different proteins, or markers, involved; the more markers that line up, the closer the match. Although cord-blood therapies don't require a perfect match, transplants relying on adult bone-marrow donors do.) But there are only 19 public banks in the U.S., and until recently the only way women could donate to them was to give birth in one of the 175 or so affiliated hospitals that have a system in place to collect and transfer cord blood.

That's where the Public Kit Donation project comes in. Three hospitals two in Texas, one in North Carolina are piloting a federal program that allows women to mail in cord blood from anywhere in the continental U.S. for inclusion in Be the Match, the national cord-blood registry. The project, which quietly launched in May and is being reported about first in TIME, lets moms-to-be request a free collection kit and teaches doctors how to use it in a seven-minute online tutorial.

The temperature-controlled kit, about the size of a microwave, is packed with consent forms, vials for the mother's blood so it can be screened for HIV and other infections, and a bag with blood thinner to keep the cord blood from clotting. Turnaround has to be quick: the blood must be frozen at a bank within 48 hours of the baby's delivery. Experienced technicians typically siphon 2 to 8 oz. (60 to 240 ml) of blood per umbilical cord, but even they retrieve the minimum amount to qualify as a unit for donation (about 900 million cells) only about half the time, since the placenta doesn't always cooperate.

It costs moms nothing to donate. The tab for collection, processing and storage can run to $2,500 but is being split by the government and the participating banks. Whenever matches are made, the banks are paid by recipients or their insurance companies, the same as they would be for a donated pint of blood from your arm. (Cord blood is far more valuable, however; a unit can cost up to $35,000.)

Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg, director of the Carolinas Cord Blood Bank at Duke University, came up with the idea of remote collection after sending out similar kits to expectant parents whose baby might be a suitable donor for a sick family member. "We thought, Maybe this could work for public donors too," she says.

Doctors hope to increase the number of minority donors in particular, because multiracial patients have a more difficult time finding a match. This reality received some attention in recent months when the parents of Devan Tatlow, a 4-year-old boy with leukemia, were seeking cord-blood donations from multiracial babies in the hopes of finding a match for their son, who is half South Asian and half white.

Moved by that quest, Baltimore attorney Urmila Taylor whose son, born on June 30, is of the same ethnic composition as Devan decided to bank publicly rather than privately. Since no Maryland hospital is set up to directly accept cord-blood donations, Taylor requested a kit from Duke and asked her doctor to complete the online training. "She said, 'O.K., great,' " says Taylor, 33. "She also said it's a shame that for most women, it gets thrown literally in the garbage can."

Not every doctor is as supportive in this era of tightly managed care. Collecting cord blood involves extra paperwork and extra time in the delivery room, and a few busy docs have expressed unhappiness about working for free, says Michael Boo, chief strategy officer at the National Marrow Donor Program, which administers the country's network of public cord-blood banks. But, he adds, "most understand this is a donation from the family to the public."

"Cord blood is a resource," says Sarah Lueck, 33, a health-policy analyst in Takoma Park, Md., who is due to give birth in mid-August and plans to have her midwife collect her baby's cord blood. Lueck, who is listed on her driver's license as an organ donor, says, "If something happened to me, I would want my organs to be used by someone who needed them. It's sort of the same idea." To make sure she won't forget the kit (as one of the first women to receive one did), she's stashing it where else? in her birth-center go bag.

http://www.time.com/...2004122,00.html

Edited December 1, 2010 by Amby

[Ban Hammer 12,836]

I'll go a step further. If we find a man or woman with immunity to this disease, I'd support enslaving him/her and cloning him/her and then selling the clones as slaves on the open market so everyone can benefit from their DNA.

[The_Dude 1,142]

I'll go a step further. If we find a man or woman with immunity to this disease, I'd support enslaving him/her and cloning him/her and then selling the clones as slaves on the open market so everyone can benefit from their DNA.

I'd like to order a midget clone.

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I'd like to order a midget clone.

Sir, our clones are for therapeutic purposes only.

[Amby 490]

Sir, our clones are for therapeutic purposes only.

a midget could be therapeutic...I think

[JohnSmith2007 353]

I apologize for the misunderstanding. I mistook "While this may be a "cure" it seems a bit extreme considering drugs can now manage HIV." as you implying that we should settle for managing the disease rather than continue to search for a cure. I too support stem cell research, but I support even embryonic stem cell research.

They started out with embryonic stem cells because they hadn't been "programed" yet to be a particular type of cell. It made them easier to manipulate. Today we have found ways of "deprograming" stem cells taken from an adult. There really isn't a need for embryonic cells any more although I can see why they want to continue to work along those lines. As long as there are controls on how we get the embryos and they are not bought and sold as a commodity then I say let them do research along any lines they feel might give a result.

[The_Dude 1,142]

a midget could be therapeutic...I think

Does laughter count as an official therapy? If so, I want 3 midgets to act out my favorite Benny Hill routines.