The German medical community said on the 12th that after an American man suffering from leukemia and AIDS received a bone marrow transplant in Berlin 20 months ago, the source of AIDS "human immunodeficiency virus" (HIV) in his body seemed to have completely disappeared; experts said , which may be caused by a genetic mutation in the donor's bone marrow.
However, the medical community emphasized that this case still needs more tests to prove that it is not a fluke; in addition, the virus may recur at any time, and it remains to be seen whether the patient will recover in the future.
Twenty months after surgery, the virus is gone
The doctor of "Berlin Charity Hospital" said that the patient in this case is a 42-year-old American man who lives in Berlin and suffers from AIDS and leukemia. The best way to treat leukemia is bone marrow transplantation. The hospital team specially selects the bone marrow with the "Delta 32" mutation in cells from healthy donors, which is believed by the academic circles to help fight AIDS, and transplants it into the patient.
And 20 months after the transplant operation, the HIV virus in the patient's body has disappeared; Whitt said that during the period, the medical team was mentally prepared for the recurrence of the pathogen, but both the hospital and the medical school experts said that the test results showed that The patient's bone marrow, blood and other organs and tissues have all been "cleared" of the HIV virus.
It is not new for the medical community to use bone marrow transplantation to treat AIDS or HIV infection; between 1982 and 1996, there were 32 experiments. In 1999, the journal "Medical Hypothesis" reviewed the results of those experiments in a special article, which pointed out that in two cases, the HIV virus was apparently eliminated.
Transplantation is not a pioneering work, there have been two cases of success
Dr. Wheeler is a hematologist, not an AIDS expert. When he was preparing to treat the American patient, he recalled the report he had read in 1996, saying that if the human body inherits the "Delta 32" mutation from both parents, it can block the CCR5 receptor of the cell and prevent it from being attacked. HIV virus attack.
According to a rough estimate, one out of every thousand Europeans and Americans inherits this receptor gene variation from both parents. Wheeler searched for a suitable bone marrow among 80 bone marrow donors, and finally found the 61st donor.
Bedley, director of the Immunology and HIV Research Office at Mayo Hospital in Minnesota, USA, said that the number of tests conducted by German scholars may not be extensive enough, and more different physiological samples must be taken to guarantee that the virus has been cleared.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the United States, said that the treatment process in this case in Germany is too expensive and dangerous, and it may not be used in the front line of AIDS treatment. But Fauci said the case may inspire experts to further study gene therapy to block or suppress the HIV virus.
