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For just the second time since the global epidemic began, a patient appears to have been cured of infection with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.
The news comes nearly 12 years to the day after the first patient known to be cured, a feat that researchers have long tried, and failed, to duplicate. The surprise success now confirms that a cure for H.I.V. infection is possible, if difficult, researchers said.
The investigators are to publish their report on Tuesday in the journal Nature and to present some of the details at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Seattle.
Publicly, the scientists are describing the case as a long-term remission. In interviews, most experts are calling it a cure, with the caveat that it is hard to know how to define the word when there are only two known instances.
Both milestones resulted from bone-marrow transplants given to infected patients. But the transplants were intended to treat cancer in the patients, not H.I.V. Bone-marrow transplantation is unlikely to be a realistic treatment option in the near future. Powerful drugs are now available to control H.I.V. infection, while the transplants are risky, with harsh side effects that can last for years. But rearming the body with immune cells similarly modified to resist H.I.V. might well succeed as a practical treatment, experts said.
HIV-1 remission following CCR5Δ32/Δ32 haematopoietic stem-cell transplantation (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1027-4) (DX)
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday March 07 2019, @04:38PM (3 children)
From a skim of Wikipedia, it sounds like the theory is that people who deal with bushmeat in Africa pretty commonly end up with the monkey version of the disease (SIV), but it needs to be quickly passed from host to host several times in humans before it manages to mutate into HIV. So they think it just became a thing in the 20th century because it took that long for human living arrangements to get to that point, with people living in close enough contact in cities with lots of prostitutes and stuff.
Low rate of transmission doesn't really matter if a sufficiently large population is exposing themselves to it on a regular basis. Don't most STDs only have a transmission rate of like 10%?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday March 07 2019, @04:43PM (2 children)
Whoops, forgot the link I was going to use.
link [wikipedia.org]
Also under "Origins":
As an aside, they really didn't make it easy to find in that article. The heck is "tropism", and how many people know that definition? I found it by doing a page search on "transmission."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday March 07 2019, @05:57PM
A turning, or what does the subject turn towards? Tropic (turn of axial tilt), trope (turning a phrase), tropism (bacteria/virus turns/prefers what cells?), heliotropic (turn towards the sun), hydrotropic (root turns towards the water). Same root.
But I love word origins, a logotropist of the first order.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @06:03PM
The HIV article is focused on the virus (virology) while the AIDS article is focused on the disease (epidemiology/physiology).
Tropism is a virology term that classifies viruses based on the types of cells they can infect (e.g. T-tropic infects T cells, M-tropic infects macrophages, anthro-tripic infects human cells)
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=HIV/AIDS&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop#Transmission [wikipedia.org]