Posted on 01/04/2014 2:06:58 PM PST by ransomnote
(Reuters) - Scientists seeking a cure for AIDS say they have been inspired, not crushed, by a major setback in which two HIV positive patients believed to have been cured found the virus re-invading their bodies once more.
True, the news hit hard last month that the so-called "Boston patients" - two men who received bone marrow transplants that appeared to rid them completely of the AIDS-causing virus - had relapsed and gone back onto antiretroviral treatment.
But experts say the disappointment could lay the basis for important leaps forward in the search for a cure.
"It's a setback for the patients, of course, but an advance for the field because the field has now gained a lot more knowledge," said Steven Deeks, a professor and HIV expert at the University of California, San Francisco.
He and other experts say the primary practical message is that current tests designed to detect even very low levels of HIV present in the body are simply not sensitive enough.
As well as having the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the Boston patients both also had a type of blood cancer called lymphoma, for which they were treated using bone marrow transplants - one man in 2008 and the other in 2010.
They continued taking the antiretroviral AIDS drugs, but eight months after each patient's transplant, doctors found they could not detect any sign of HIV in their blood.
In the early part of 2013, both patients decided to stop taking their AIDS drugs and both appeared to remain HIV-free - prompting their doctors, Timothy Henrich and Daniel Kuritzkes from Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, to announce at a conference in July that they may have been cured.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Research grants are inspiring, not crushing.
Just a further reminder that its a diseased world out there.
Wonder if behavior modification was part of the curative regimen...
Maybe the tests are sensitive enough...or maybe their behavior that got them infected in the first place didn’t change and they reinfected themselves.
It may be the virus hid out deep in the fat or nervous tissue and emerged after some time.
both patients decided to stop taking their AIDS drugs
maybe they should stop doing what got them AIDS in the first place...
fortunately 100% of any health care treatments they want will be covered by Obamacare
(and then some!)
Good example why homosexual men should never be allowed to donate blood no matter what tests show.
Relapse or reinfection?
Which the wanted to stop doing even though it is flawed... because it offended the homosexuals to ask them about their lifestyles and “discriminate” against them.
We know what “re-invaded” their bodies.
so Obama forces homosexual perverts on military while allowing these scum to attack good religious people they hate...the new label is homo skeptic
Eradicating mosquitos keept Yellow Fever under control.
Reinfection, most likely.
it was previously announced in another recent study that this kind of result was likely; that after heavy bombardment by the cocktails of anti-HIV drugs, HIV was discovered to be hibernating so inconspicously, and at such minute levels, in the body’s cells as to be hard to detect; where, if and when the cocktail of anti-HIV drugs is reduced or ended, it - the HIV - detects a change in the blood stream that indicates that fact, comes out of hibernation and starts attacking the immune cells all over again
HIV is a retrovirus. There will never be a cure.
i’ll get flamed for this statement but here goes: No one ever died from HIV or Aids. They die or contract other deadly diseases. What is the difference between a lymphoma patient with or without HIV. Isn’t the lymphoma the problem. Does HIV cause the lymphoma? ( i think this is what the science says it does) Then what causes the lymphoma in a person without HIV? and where did the HIV apocalyptic epidemic go? Isn’t Magic Johnson still floating around 20 years after an HIV discovery?
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