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HIV Reportedly Cured In A Second Patient

posted by takyon on Wednesday March 06 2019, @09:24PM   Printer-friendly

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

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)

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  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday March 07 2019, @04:43PM (2 children)

    by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday March 07 2019, @04:43PM (#811191)

    Whoops, forgot the link I was going to use.

    Sexual intercourse is the major mode of HIV transmission.

    link [wikipedia.org]

    Also under "Origins":

    While transmission rates of HIV during vaginal intercourse are typically low, they are increased manyfold if one of the partners suffers from a sexually transmitted infection resulting in genital ulcers. Early 1900s colonial cities were notable due to their high prevalence of prostitution and genital ulcers to the degree that as of 1928 as many as 45% of female residents of eastern Leopoldville were thought to have been prostitutes and as of 1933 around 15% of all residents of the same city were infected by one of the forms of syphilis.[146]

    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."

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  • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday March 07 2019, @05:57PM

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Thursday March 07 2019, @05:57PM (#811247) Journal

    The heck is "tropism", and how many people know that definition?

    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.

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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @06:03PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @06:03PM (#811252)

    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]