Keywords: AIDS, HIV, healthcare
A treatment typically used to fight leukemia may have cured an American man of AIDS, The Associated Press reports. Doctors in Germany treated the 42-year-old patient, an unidentified resident of Berlin who had been HIV-positive for more than a decade, with a targeted bone-marrow transplant. Twenty months later, researchers at Berlin's Charite Medical University said tests on bone marrow, blood and other organ tissues are all clear of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
At a news conference at the university, Dr. Gero Huetter said he planned the bone-marrow transplant for the patient because he was suffering from leukemia. Huetter said he recalled reading about people with a genetic mutation that seemed to make them resistant to HIV. He used bone marrow from a donor with that genetic mutation for his patient's transplant.
Huetter and other researchers said the case might be a fluke, while other medical experts said that the post-treatment testing for the presence of HIV was not extensive enough. But The Associated Press reports that the case may lead to greater interest in gene therapy as a way to fight AIDS.
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