In the years since, they developed antiretroviral therapy (ART), the most effective treatment for the range of disease, which bolsters the body’s immune by suppressing the virus’ ability to replicate.
Not a single drug has been developed to cure HIV, but there’s one man who is considered to be cured of the disease.
Known as the “Berlin patient,” it’s believed that a combination of treatments he got while diagnosed with leukemia contributed to his viral load being undetectable. Now, a new study has delved into these factors in an effort to find possible routes for a cure.
The case of the Berlin patient, whose real name is Timothy
Ray Brown, was special. He had HIV and leukemia, a cancer of the white
blood cells. So, not only were his immune CD4-T cells being attacked by
HIV but the bone marrow that created them was cancerous.
Brown’s
treatment consisted of radiation to kill the cancer cells and stem cells
in his bone marrow, and then underwent a bone-marrow transplant to help
his body produce healthy white blood cells again.
Soon after his
treatment, his cancer had gone into remission and his HIV viral load
became undetectable. Since then, he’s gone off ART, and has remained
healthy.
Nobody knows exactly how all of this contributed to being
cured. In an effort to better understand it, researchers from Emory
University in Atlanta tested three possible ways in macaque monkeys.
One
possible answer to “how” may have been that the radiation killed all of
the virus in Brown’s blood.
Another way it could have left his body was
through what’s called a “graft versus host” reaction, in which the
cells produced by the transplanted marrow attacked HIV-positive
reservoir cells.
But perhaps the most interesting of possibilities; the
researchers pointed to the marrow donor’s genealogy, which left him with
a genetic mutation that disables the CCR5 gene this gene is
responsible for coding a protein that helps HIV enter human cells.
Hoping to decide which one of these three factors led to
Brown being cured, the researchers took six monkeys and gave half of
them the hybrid Simian-Human Immunodeficiency Virus (SHIV).
The monkeys
then underwent ART for several weeks, and then blasted them with
radiation, followed by a bone marrow transplant taken from their own
bodies before they got SHIV.
By giving the monkeys their own healthy
bone marrow, they could reproduce blood cells in the monkeys without the
possibility of a “graft versus host” reaction.
Once the monkeys regrew blood cells, the researchers
stopped ART, and saw a rapid regrowth of HIV in the control group of
monkeys.
Although the radiation had killed almost everything, from CD4-T
cells to HIV, in the other three monkeys, two still rebounded.
The
third died of kidney failure, however, scientists examined its tissue
and found the virus. CONTINUE READING
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