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发帖数: 24887 | 1 http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110603/us_yblog_thel
Since HIV was discovered 30 years ago this week, 30 million people have died
from the disease, and it continues to spread at the rate of 7,000 people
per day globally, the UN says.
There's not much good news when it comes to this devastating virus. But that
is perhaps why the story of the man scientists call the "Berlin patient" is
so remarkable and has generated so much excitement among the HIV advocacy
community.
Timothy Ray Brown suffered from both leukemia and HIV when he received a
bone marrow stem cell transplant in Berlin, Germany in 2007. The transplant
came from a man who was immune to HIV, which scientists say about 1 percent
of Caucasians are. (According to San Francisco's CBS affiliate, the trait
may be passed down from ancestors who became immune to the plague centuries
ago. This Wired story says it was more likely passed down from people who
became immune to a smallpox-like disease.)
What happened next has stunned the dozens of scientists who are closely
monitoring Brown: His HIV went away.
"He has no replicating virus and he isn't taking any medication. And he will
now probably never have any problems with HIV," his doctor Gero Huetter
told Reuters. Brown now lives in the Bay Area, and suffers from some mild
neurological difficulties after the operation. "It makes me very happy," he
says of the incredible cure.
The development of anti-retroviral drugs in the 1990s was the first sign of
hope in the epidemic, transforming the disease from a sudden killer to a
more manageable illness that could be lived with for decades. But still, the
miraculous cocktail of drugs is expensive, costing $13 billion a year in
developing countries alone, according to Reuters. That figure is expected to
triple in 20 years--raising the worry that more sick people will not be
able to afford treatment.
Although Brown's story is remarkable, scientists were quick to point out
that bone marrow transplants can be fatal, and there's no way Brown's
treatment could be applied to the 33.3 million people around the world
living with HIV. The discovery does encourage "cure research," according to
Dr. Jay Levy, who co-discovered HIV thirty years ago, something that many
people did not even think was possible years ago. |
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