A 42-year-old HIV patient with leukemia appears to have no detectable HIV in his blood and no symptoms after a stem cell transplant from a donor carrying a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS, according to a report published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"The patient is fine," said Dr. Gero Hutter of Charite Universitatsmedizin Berlin in Germany. "Today, two years after his transplantation, he is still without any signs of HIV disease and without antiretroviral medication."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/11/health.hiv.stemcell/index.html?eref=rss_mostpopular

Oh, and why in Germany, because the last set of Born Again Christian Morons in office here prohibited using stem cells.  That's great science work there Lou.

Thanks for posting this T.

Mina.

This is beyond wonderful news!

Well its great news for Africa if it works on a mass scale, that's for sure.

Quote from: tekla on February 13, 2009, 12:08:07 AM
Well its great news for Africa if it works on a mass scale, that's for sure.

Only, where are you going to find a pharma or biotech company willing to grow enough of those stemcells AND give them to poor people for free.

Yeah, yesterday's good mood just wasn't ever gonna last in this cynical head of mine.

Mina.

This might turn out to be a very simple procedure, cheep to produce. We can hope. I now how bad this has impacted Africa, and how important a cheep cure would be

I hope you're right Tekla.

Thanks again for the info.

Mina.

It isn't cheap and you need a major transplant centre and it's very risky.
First you need to grow the SC, before transplant you have to eradicate the patients immune cells. They are then open to infection and need to be in a sterile environment. Then the transplant - simple, basically a blood transfusion..
Then the time for the transplant to take, in a sterile environment. Then success or failure.
Yes for the rich. No for the poor.
Same old story

Cindy James

Thank you for this info Tekla.