Perhaps you've seen the story of the 44-year-old American man reportedly "cured" of HIV in Germany--it's been making the rounds over the past week. What's actually happening here? The Procedure This is a story that dates back a few years; in fact, 80beats blogged about this case years ago when it first made the news. Back in 2007, the man—Timothy Ray Brown—was an HIV-positive patient suffering from acute myeloid leukemia. When standard chemotherapy couldn't help him, his docs in Germany turned to a bone marrow transplant, with one twist.
Brown's oncologist decided to look for a bone marrow donor who had a had a special genetic mutation that made the stem cells in it naturally resistant to HIV infection. His physician, Dr. Gero Huetter, was able to find this rare match and Brown got the bone marrow transplant. He needed a second stem cell transplant because the cancer came back. Today, he appears to be cancer free and doctors can't find traces of the virus that causes AIDS either. [CNN]
