stem cell research helps HIV, AIDS

Leading AIDS researchers have used a stem cell treatment for leukemia to remove all traces of HIV from an American man living in Berlin. This man was treated 10 years after his infection of HIV positive all due to the leukemia treatment. He had a bone marrow transplant at Berlin's Charité hospital and stem cell's of a man who is resistant to the virus. The gene therapy takes out a patient's immune system with radiation and medication, with a rate of up to 30 per cent. Some 600 days on, there is still no trace of HIV in his system. The procedure comes with such a high mortality rate that it would be ethically unjustifiable except for this specific situation when a patient was forced to have a transplant because of another disease," said Dr Gero Hütter, one of the two Charité doctors behind the procedure. The best medication that goes against the virus that causes Aids has been anti-retroviral drugs. these drugs have very serious side effects. The German researchers took a roundabout approach, scouring the country for bone marrow donors for patients with the required natural immunity to HIV. the immunity is caused by natural genetic mutation preventing production of CCR5, the substance the HI-virus targets to enter cells. only 80 have stepped up and donate their marrow in Germany.