Comment Move Along (Score 0) 639
In the article it states that they are fairly sure that some HIV still exists in the patient's body. Although none has been detectable in blood samples for over 600 days.
They are not completely sure if the extreme chemotherapy and other stuff they do to kill your bone marrow just happened to kill off most of the HIV, or if the new marrow has in fact started producing the new white blood cells and the HIV simply can not infect them.
It also states that something along the lines of around 1% of the population has this genetic mutation.
They cite another case that a person was giving a bone marrow transplant with similar chemotherapy, but they died shortly afterward from a tumor. No traces of HIV could be found in this persons body, but they are unsure if the transplanted marrow had the mutation that this article is about.
On a final note, the article states that most people do not survive the extreme chemotherapy required to kill off bone marrow and that it is only given to late state cancer patients.
Due to the low amount of donors (in the world) with the "HIV-Free" mutation and the extreme risk involved with marrow transplants this is probably not going to be "functionally" curing you, proactively or retroactively, of HIV any time soon.
They are not completely sure if the extreme chemotherapy and other stuff they do to kill your bone marrow just happened to kill off most of the HIV, or if the new marrow has in fact started producing the new white blood cells and the HIV simply can not infect them.
It also states that something along the lines of around 1% of the population has this genetic mutation.
They cite another case that a person was giving a bone marrow transplant with similar chemotherapy, but they died shortly afterward from a tumor. No traces of HIV could be found in this persons body, but they are unsure if the transplanted marrow had the mutation that this article is about.
On a final note, the article states that most people do not survive the extreme chemotherapy required to kill off bone marrow and that it is only given to late state cancer patients.
Due to the low amount of donors (in the world) with the "HIV-Free" mutation and the extreme risk involved with marrow transplants this is probably not going to be "functionally" curing you, proactively or retroactively, of HIV any time soon.
