Great news has emerged from America today, where it looks like two HIV positive patients treated in Boston have become free of the virus after receiving cancer-treating bone marrow transplants.
The patients, after developing lymphoma, were treated with bone marrow stem-cell transplants with an unexpected, but graciously received reward: doctors were unable to discover traces of the HIV infection in their patients soon after the transplants. Since the discovery, one of the patients has not been on his antiretroviral drug treatment—which suppresses the HIV virus—for 7 weeks; the other 15 weeks.
The breakthrough has inspired hope among some 34 million people worldwide who are infected with the virus that weakens immune cells and causes AIDS; however some are still cautious to feel optimistic about the breakthrough turning in to an accessible and veritable cure in the future: stem cell transplants are not at all cost-effective, which could create a significant barrier for many patients.
Doctors are hardly recommending patients turn to the transplant method to cure HIV yet; though as with every breakthrough in HIV in the past—a baby cured of HIV this year by doctors conducting early treatment; as well as Timothy Brown, who was treated with a blood cell transplant from a donor with a rare genetic mutation, causing resistance to HIV—the more doctors and scientists learn about the virus, the closer they come to understanding the intricacies of its behaviour and discovering a cure.
Title image by Alex Wong for Getty Images.
Via ABC
