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45-Year-Old Man Is Cured of HIV
Experimental Transplant Cures Man of Feared Virus
Timothy Ray Brown, a 45-year-old man who underwent an experimental procedure in 2007, has been cured of HIV. He has now been entered in scientific journals as the first man ever to have the feared virus completely eliminated from his body.
"I’m cured of HIV. I had HIV but I don’t anymore," said Brown.
Brown tested positive for HIV back in 1995 and was suffering from leukemia and AIDS for years while living in Berlin, Germany.
In 2007, Brown underwent an experimental bone marrow stem cell transplant in which he received stem cells from a donor who was reportedly immune to HIV.
"I quit taking my HIV medication the day that I got the transplant and haven’t had to take any since," said Brown, who is referred to as "The Berlin Patient" by the medical community.
Now, almost four years after receiving the experimental transplant, Brown has no detectable HIV in his blood and is described by doctors as "functionally cured" of the virus.
"He has no replicating virus and he isn't taking any medication. And he will now probably never have any problems with HIV," said his doctor Gero Huetter.
Brown now lives in the San Francisco Bay area, and his progress continues to be monitored by doctors at San Francisco General Hospital and at the University of California at San Francisco medical center.
Dr. Jay Levy of UCSF says that Brown's amazing case is opening the door to the field of "cure research."
"If you’re able to take the white cells from someone and manipulate them so they’re no longer infected, or infectable, no longer infectable by HIV, and those white cells become the whole immune system of that individual, you’ve got essentially a functional cure," said Levy.
But doctors warn that Brown's success may not be applicable to many others who are infected with HIV, because marrow transplants are risky procedures and doctors aren't exactly sure which part of Brown's particular treatment led to his recovery.
Nonetheless, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation is now using the word 'cure' in the case of Brown, after having avoided using the word for decades.
"You sort of felt like you couldn’t say ‘cure’ for a number of years. Scientists and clinicians and people with HIV alike felt that was a promise that was never going to be realized and it was dangerous to direct a lot of energy toward it," said Dr. Judy Auerbach. "And now things have shifted."
(Sources: Reuters, CBS News, Yahoo News)
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