Cure Watch 2013: Two More People 'Cured' of HIV
Timothy Ray Brown
became internationally famous in 2010 after doctors in Berlin
apparently and unwittingly "cured" his HIV infection. This medical
marvel came after Brown underwent a routine bone marrow transplant for
blood cancer treatment. The transplant, made with material from a donor
with a rare blood mutation that makes it impossible for HIV to
replicate, was a success. The cancer was gone and, as a surprising
bonus, so was Brown's HIV. For now, at least, many say Brown has been
"cured."
The c-word will likely be
bandied about over today's news coming out of Boston — that two more
people are free of HIV after similar bone marrow transplants — but
doctors there seem to prefer the term "remission."
As
with Brown, these two patients were fighting both HIV and blood cancer
and underwent marrow transplants as a last resort to fight the cancer.
Unlike the Brown case, neither of the patients' donors had the anti-HIV
blood mutation. Their HIV should have lingered post-surgery.
Theoretically, at least. But it didn't. Now the patients, two-and-a-half
years after their transplants, are being described as "virus free"
because they don't have detectable HIV.
According to The New York Times, "The
two patients had transplants between two and five years ago. They had
months of tests on their blood and tissues to make sure no HIV or
antibodies to it were found, before Dr. [Timothy] Henrich and his
research partner, Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes, proposed stopping the
antiretroviral treatment. For such tests, doctors remove immune cells
and 'activate' them with chemicals to make them reproduce. If any virus
is hiding in the cells’ DNA, it is 'spit out' and can be detected."
Doctors
think antiretroviral drugs given after the transplants helped keep HIV
from regenerating in the new cells, which is why the patients are in
"remission," as one doctor called it. The two Boston patients "feel
great and are leading completely normal lives," said their doctor.
Before
you get too excited, keep in mind there's still tons of research to do
and bone marrow transplants are not an option for treating people most
with HIV.
As the New York Times
reports, "The technique used on them involves severely weakening the
immune system before a marrow transplant. It is so dangerous that it is
unethical to perform it on anyone not already at risk of dying from
cancer, especially because most people with HIV can live relatively
normal lives by taking a daily antiretroviral cocktail."
But who knows? Maybe future doctors, discussing HIV's end, will say, "The cure was in us all along."
