|
Cure for Aids?
|
|
Topic Started: Nov 13 2008, 05:29 PM (79 Views)
|
|
TheObserver
|
Nov 13 2008, 05:29 PM
Post #1
|
|
- Posts:
- 12,855
- Group:
- Members
- Member
- #51
- Joined:
- February 7, 2006
- All Time Favorite Wrestler(s):
- Great Muta HBK Steamboat Vader
- Favorite Active Wrestler(s):
- Angle Daniels Punk Joe Beer Money Doug Williams
- STATUS:
- AJ Styles to Madison: SHUT UP HOOKER!
|
- Quote:
-
BERLIN - An American man who suffered from AIDS appears to have been cured of the disease 20 months after receiving a targeted bone marrow transplant normally used to fight leukemia, his doctors said.
While researchers — and the doctors themselves — caution that the case might be no more than a fluke, others say it may inspire a greater interest in gene therapy to fight the disease that claims 2 million lives each year. The virus has infected 33 million people worldwide.
Dr. Gero Huetter said Wedneday his 42-year-old patient, an American living in Berlin who was not identified, had been infected with the AIDS virus for more than a decade. But 20 months after undergoing a transplant of genetically selected bone marrow, he no longer shows signs of carrying the virus.
"We waited every day for a bad reading," Huetter said.
It has not come. Researchers at Berlin's Charite hospital and medical school say tests on his bone marrow, blood and other organ tissues have all been clean.
However, Dr. Andrew Badley, director of the HIV and immunology research lab at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., said those tests have probably not been extensive enough.
"A lot more scrutiny from a lot of different biological samples would be required to say it's not present," Badley said.
This isn't the first time marrow transplants have been attempted for treating AIDS or HIV infection. In 1999, an article in the journal Medical Hypotheses reviewed the results of 32 attempts reported between 1982 and 1996. In two cases, HIV was apparently eradicated, the review reported.
Huetter's patient was under treatment at Charite for both AIDS and leukemia, which developed unrelated to HIV.
As Huetter — who is a hematologist, not an HIV specialist — prepared to treat the patient's leukemia with a bone marrow transplant, he recalled that some people carry a genetic mutation that seems to make them resistant to HIV infection. If the mutation, called Delta 32, is inherited from both parents, it prevents HIV from attaching itself to cells by blocking CCR5, a receptor that acts as a kind of gateway.
"I read it in 1996, coincidentally," Huetter told reporters at the medical school. "I remembered it and thought it might work."
Roughly one in 1,000 Europeans and Americans have inherited the mutation from both parents, and Huetter set out to find one such person among donors that matched the patient's marrow type. Out of a pool of 80 suitable donors, the 61st person tested carried the proper mutation.
Before the transplant, the patient endured powerful drugs and radiation to kill off his own infected bone marrow cells and disable his immune system — a treatment fatal to between 20 and 30 percent of recipients.
He was also taken off the potent drugs used to treat his AIDS. Huetter's team feared that the drugs might interfere with the new marrow cells' survival. They risked lowering his defenses in the hopes that the new, mutated cells would reject the virus on their own.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases in the U.S., said the procedure was too costly and too dangerous to employ as a firstline cure. But he said it could inspire researchers to pursue gene therapy as a means to block or suppress HIV.
"It helps prove the concept that if somehow you can block the expression of CCR5, maybe by gene therapy, you might be able to inhibit the ability of the virus to replicate," Fauci said.
David Roth, a professor of epidemiology and international public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said gene therapy as cheap and effective as current drug treatments is in very early stages of development.
"That's a long way down the line because there may be other negative things that go with that mutation that we don't know about."
Even for the patient in Berlin, the lack of a clear understanding of exactly why his AIDS has disappeared means his future is far from certain.
"The virus is wily," Huetter said. "There could always be a resurgence."
(This version CORRECTS spelling of doctor's name to Huetter throughout.)
|
|
|
| |
|
Purple Marauder
|
Nov 13 2008, 05:34 PM
Post #2
|
|
Stand Back! There's a Hurricane Coming Through
- Posts:
- 39,739
- Group:
- Members
- Member
- #86
- Joined:
- March 21, 2006
- Current Theme:
- Blue Danger
- All Time Favorite Wrestler(s):
- Shawn Michaels, Arn Anderson & The Hurricane
- Favorite Active Wrestler(s):
- Dolph Ziggler & Bray Wyatt
|
It would be great if this ends up being a cure. I have had a big problem with the medical industry. My question is, When was the last time they cured anything? There used to be all kinds of terrible diseases that eventually got cured. But, it seems to me, that the medical profession has learned that you make a lot of money by providing sick people with treatments and medicine that allows them to live with a disease rather than finding cures for them. I know that there are people out there that want nothing more than to cure diseases, but the big money seems to be going into researching ways to keep people on medicine for the rest of their lives.
|
|
|
| |
|
TheObserver
|
Nov 13 2008, 05:54 PM
Post #3
|
|
- Posts:
- 12,855
- Group:
- Members
- Member
- #51
- Joined:
- February 7, 2006
- All Time Favorite Wrestler(s):
- Great Muta HBK Steamboat Vader
- Favorite Active Wrestler(s):
- Angle Daniels Punk Joe Beer Money Doug Williams
- STATUS:
- AJ Styles to Madison: SHUT UP HOOKER!
|
I know what you mean. It really comes down to the money that will be dished out to finding a cure for something. Between doctor bills and prescription ones, some people (like myself) that doesn't have health insurance have to dish out much more than it should be for certain things and yet it seems that the higher ups don't want to find cures for certain things. Just look how many people die from cancer or certain types but yet go through chemotherapy to try and make themselves better but it doesn't work all the time.
Conspirators talk about that what better way to get rid of an overpopulating country? By letting people suffer from not being able to find the time to find a cure for something that they should.
I personally have psoriasis and yet there are sites that are willing to try and find a cure but the problem is that there aren't enough funds dished out to do so. Next year in February, the researchers who are trying to make a difference are going straight to congress about the issue.
- Quote:
-
The annual National Psoriasis Foundation Capitol Hill Day is your chance to travel to the nation's capitol and let your U.S. senators and representatives know about the need for a cure for psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis!
We are closer than ever to achieving more psoriasis research and better access to care, but there is more critical work to do. Join us in Washington, D.C., as we ask members of Congress to improve access to care and increase research funding to find a cure.
I really am pulling for this cause there are to many people that have it and to not find a cure makes it seem that it is about how much money you have to spend.
|
|
|
| |
|
Kame
|
Nov 13 2008, 08:38 PM
Post #4
|
|
- Posts:
- 18,515
- Group:
- Members
- Member
- #17
- Joined:
- January 8, 2006
- Current Theme:
- Classic Teal
- All Time Favorite Wrestler(s):
- Eddie Guerrero
|
One of my friend's brothers informed me about this news in the library this morning. Awesome to hear. I hope that they will be able to officially cure the disease once and for all.
Edited by Kame, Nov 13 2008, 08:38 PM.
|
|
|
| |
|
Nubochanozep
|
Nov 14 2008, 10:42 PM
Post #5
|
|
- Posts:
- 17,631
- Group:
- Members
- Member
- #27
- Joined:
- January 17, 2006
- All Time Favorite Wrestler(s):
- Shawn Michaels, Mick Foley
- Favorite Active Wrestler(s):
- Brock Lesnar
|
- Purplemarauder
- Nov 13 2008, 05:34 PM
It would be great if this ends up being a cure. I have had a big problem with the medical industry. My question is, When was the last time they cured anything? There used to be all kinds of terrible diseases that eventually got cured. But, it seems to me, that the medical profession has learned that you make a lot of money by providing sick people with treatments and medicine that allows them to live with a disease rather than finding cures for them. I know that there are people out there that want nothing more than to cure diseases, but the big money seems to be going into researching ways to keep people on medicine for the rest of their lives. Lol man. Lol. Just because you don't hear of things on the news doesn't mean they don't exist.
And what were all those diseases that were cured? Out of how many diseases?
|
|
|
| |
|
Darren
|
Nov 16 2008, 04:57 PM
Post #6
|
|
The Best a Man can Get
- Posts:
- 2,855
- Group:
- Members
- Member
- #188
- Joined:
- July 7, 2006
|
There are only 10 diseases left, that's why they made up the bird flu, to keep them all in jobs
|
|
|
| |
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
|