Bone marrow 'cures HIV patient'

[Allen Yeh]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7726118.stm

Roughly one in 1,000 Europeans and Americans have an inherited genetic mutation, which prevents HIV from attaching itself to cells.

My wife and I were talking about this last night and what ramifications it has for those people.

[Steven Low]

Yeah, as it said it's for very few people.

Basically they would have to irradiate you so all your bone marrow dies (can be lethal), then you have to survive the surgery and transplanted marrow (can be lethal).

Only a good option for those with leukemia and HIV.


Most of the conventional stuff is looking at stemming the virus itself -- binding, entry, reverse transcription, viral envelope processing, etc. I suppose it would be a decent idea to investigate possibly gene therapy.. although gene therapy itself has proven so far to be a failure.