If you haven't heard, Timothy Ray Brown is the gentleman deemed First Man Cured of AIDS. The vanquishing of the HIV virus from his body has given hope to people that a cure will be on the way. Tim Brown, from the San Francisco Bay Area, had a wild and accidental cure that has it's own dangers.
If you follow the thread I'v linked to, and read the article, the procedure that cured Browns HIV infection might surprise you. Paraphrasing: Brown, living in Berlin, was diagnosed with a type of Leukemia, began chemo therapy, got a little better, then a little worse, then bottomed out and lost his sight and ability to walk. Once the cancer moved to his marrow, he needed a stem cell transplant, and the stem cell donor they had was one of the 2% of humans naturally immune to HIV and AIDS. They've tried grafting immune stem cells into HIV+ patients before, with no success. This time, though, it worked, and after multiple tests, it was concluded that Timothy Ray Brown is the first person in recorded medicine to have been cured of HIV.
The reason immuno-grafts don't usually work is because the HIV has enough time in an infected patient to develop it's own attacking capabilities on those grafted immune cells. What happened with Brown was that the chemo had killed enough HIV infected cells that it didn't have the time to develop the means to attack the new immuno-graft cells.
The conclusion is that chemo and immuno-grafts might be an answer. Would this help the epidemic in Africa?
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