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How Did the 'Berlin Patient' Rid Himself of HIV?
sciencehabit writes: Researchers are closer to unraveling the mystery of how Timothy Ray Brown, the only human cured of HIV, defeated the virus, according to a new study. Although the work doesn't provide a definitive answer, it rules out one possible explanation. [R]esearchers point to three different factors that could independently or in combination have rid Brown’s body of HIV. The first is the process of conditioning, in which doctors destroyed Brown’s own immune system with chemotherapy and whole body irradiation to prepare him for his bone marrow transplant. His oncologist, Gero Hütter, who was then with the Free University of Berlin, also took an extra step that he thought might not only cure the leukemia but also help rid Brown’s body of HIV. He found a bone marrow donor who had a rare mutation in a gene that cripples a key receptor on white blood cells the virus uses to establish an infection. (For years, researchers referred to Brown as "the Berlin patient.") The third possibility is his new immune system attacked remnants of his old one that held HIV-infected cells, a process known as graft versus host disease.
Maybe the disease rejected him?
Although the work doesn't provide a definitive answer, it rules out one possible explanation
...that conditioning by itself likely cannot rid the body of the AIDS virus.
He can't die, you fool, unless his head comes away from his neck.
now that he's outed, expect a seven-foot lunatic with a sword to come after him.
Didn't work for me!
Does the subject possess any mysterious rings, amulets, or lamps?
Does he make sacrifices to chthonic gods, and if so, which?
Did he recently undertake a quest to bring together a collection of ancient magic gems?
Is the hospital frequented by a wizard or a druid cult?
I appreciate the work they did, but when they don't even consider the patient being swapped with his twin from an alternate dimension it's hard to call it rigorous.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
His is the drill that will pierce the HIV-ens!
Why does every slashdot article have to be about politicians...oh wait
there are only 2 things here:
1. radiation treatment
2. bone marrow from an x-man
my money is on #2.
Very interesting stuff. The far reaching implications of using this method to fight viral infections is fascinating.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -Carl Sagan
According to the summary
Although the work doesn't provide a definitive answer, it rules out one possible explanation. [R]esearchers point to three different factors that could independently or in combination have rid Brown’s body of HIV.
Unfortunately the summary forgets to mention the explanation that was ruled out or even clearly delineate the three different factors (though the latter was more the fault of the original article).
From my reading of TFA:
Explanation 1: Conditioning: The radiation that destroyed his immune system also killed off the HIV (because HIV lives in the cells of the immune system).
Explanation 2: Shiny new immune system: The new bone marrow had a mutation that was immune to HIV and that cured him (maybe by detecting and killing HIV infected cells?).
Explanation 3: Graft vs host: The new immune system killed off his old one, not just the HIV infected cells but all the old immune systems cells including those infected with HIV.
So the researchers took chimps, extracted some stem cells (bone marrow?), infected them with SHIV (Simian HIV), destroyed their immune systems with radiation, then reinjected the uninfected stem cells.
The SHIV quickly came back which rules out explanation 1.
I stole this Sig
Looks like those curses from god just ain't what they used to be. :-)
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Easy. When the virus asked him if he was a god, he finally said "yes."
Everyone can use some aids to help them with their daily lives.
Seems like #2 combined with either #1 or #3 is the most obvious answer.
A new immune system that is resistant to the virus combined with getting rid of the old system (either by intentionally destroying it prior to the transplant or by the new cells turning on the old ones) would intuitively seem like the way to deal with an infected immune system.
Without the new system being resistant you'd expect the virus to simply infect the new cells as there should be some virii in the blood streamfor some time even if all the infected cells are destroyed by conditioning, and new vulnerable cells attacking the old vulnerable cells is an obviously flawed way to fight the infection.
He still produces HIV but his T cells aren't susceptible to infection (and death) because of the unusual receptor obtained from the bone marrow donor.
This isn't the first time HIV immunity has been recorded.
Please, try being a Pastafarian. I get cursed with a terminal disease at least once before my morning coffee. Considering our vengeful god, it is amazing any of us still alive.
Partially due to above circumstances, on a long enough scale, Pastafarian mortality approaches 100%.
So eating a lot of protein cures HIV? Who knew. I guess those idiot physicians and biochemists and infectious disease specialists and epidemiologists just don't understand anything a pharmaceutical rep doesn't tell them.
Format the drive and reinstall all your software. Probably takes the same amount of time, too.
I know they are pronouncing him "cured".
That's the funny thing about diseases like HIV.
The simple fact is, it may STILL be in his system. Just, currently, in quantities far too low to be detected.
But, give it a couple years. And out of his blood/bone marrow/organs, it'll come. And it'll multiply into life threatening numbers again.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
"We're going to take out your immune system ... And replace it with a new and improved one. Let's see if anyone notices!"
He fucked a frog.
Stopped taking it up the ass by dozens of total stangers....
And now the story of a wealthy family who lost everything, and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together.
Is it true your god condemns the unfaithful to die moaning in ecstasy, one bite before the end of a plate of pasta in a wine/blue cheese/garlic sauce?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
What a crock of bullshit, humans are cured of all diseases all the time. The only time its widely publicized is when the 'medical industry' claims to have done it with their big pharma and other unnecessary medical treatments. There are documented cases of hiv positive people, becoming hiv negative without the 'help' of the medical industry as well as many other diseases and conditions. We just don't hear about it, because if everyone knew, the ultimate death sentence would occur to the medical industry - "lack of monetary gain".
No.
Again, when the virus stips your cells to make more of its own offspring - this is normal viral activity - it does something other viruses don't do, it also strips out selenium.
So they tried supplementing with just selenium and that helped but did not reverse the disease.
So they looked at what other essential (the body can't make them) molecules it took from the body and ignored non-essential (the body can make more of those molecules and doesn't have to ingest them) molecules the virus stripped from the host cells.
Low and behold, Tryptophan, Cysteine and Glutamine.
If you look up what has glutamine an in what amounts, nothing come close to beef[1] and it also has a fair amount of Tryptophan.
Cysteine is in cheese, the more aged the better. Parrnasian probabky has more than more other common ones I'd guess.
Because acidic rains for millions of years leached minerals form the Amazonian clay soils those minerals all ended up someplace an that's where brazil nut trees grow. They have so much selenium, that if you eat a handful a day you'll have selenosis in a week - a, um, disruption in the alimentary canal shall we say.
From both ends. But they're utterly essential for heart, brain and immune system.
In fact if you look you'll notice Senegal, like Brazil, has natural deposits of selenium in the soil everywhere and it was this that accounted for the reduced rate of incidence of HIV in Senegal - the HIV rate there is as low as it is in the US despite the fact the Senegalese have the same sub saharan cultural practices (and by that I mean fucking a lot) as the rest of the Sub Saharan Africa that has a 5-10X higher rate of HIV infection . This stands out, as does Finland where they put a lot of selenium in the soil to try to slow down heart diseases - the aids rate is lower than normal there too.
So "eating a lot of protein" per se won't do it. You'd have to use beef, cheese and a brazil nut or two.
Note also this works on all selenoviruses - which includes all the Coxsackie viruses which includes Hep C and others.
Most commercial medical training is strictly for acute care and they're the best in the world. But for chronic conditions they're less than useless an haven't fond anything useful since penicillin.
I hate t say it but there is literally no money in finding cures, there's only money for developing pills that are patentable that come close to what some other pill does. Some do better, some do worse. But if they're patented, they're funded.
They has the same problem with vitamin C, too. Jacques Cartier got stuck in Canada in Montreal in the Winter of 1580 (and you KNOW what a bitch that can be) and when his crew was near death the were saved from scurvy with some pine bark tea. When they told the medical profession back home they's fond a cure for scurvy they were told "we have nothing to learn from savages" and took another 300 years to discover vitamin C, an essential nutrient to every living plant and animal and until then scurvy was known to be caused by Foul humors and more people died needlessly.
So here's what happens when you try to tell people you have a treatment: the guy that discovered this raises money tests this where it's most needed, Uganda, at the Mengo clinic. It goes well and the guy then goes to the next village over and talks to the clinic there and says hey we have this treatment and we can cure your patients now.
The doctor there is horrified. "We can't cure these people! We get paid by pharmaceutical companies to test antiretrovirals on AIDS patients and if they get better they can't test and the whole clinic shuts down and it's alll the village has and I'm out of a job as there's no money for a doctor here." This is what actually happened.
So whaddya do? You write a book and move on. Not the first time this happened, there's at least a half dozen similar stories suppressed medicine in the form of biochemical understanding, but without commercial backing that makes treatments actuall
Need Mercedes parts ?