Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stem cell transplant has cured HIV infection, say doctors

aidsmap.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 42 posts

Re: Stem cell transplant has cured HIV infection, say doctors

#31

Post by rms »

JCThoughtscream wrote: post #4

If this doesn't turn out to be overblown sensationalism, then the team behind this (actual!) cure probably deserves a Nobel for their efforts and results.

They don't deserve a Nobel because the idea has been obvious in medicine for years. They just got very lucky in being able to deliver a confirmed CCR5 delta 32+ bone marrow transplant to someone with HIV in a medically responsible way.

Curing HIV is an incredible thing to have accomplished but the confirmation of a successful surgery from 3 years ago doesn't advance the bounds of scientific knowledge as much as it was might seem when you see a story like this in the news.

Re: Stem cell transplant has cured HIV infection, say doctors

#32

Post by carbocation »

mfukar wrote: post #26
icandoitbetter wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AIDS has actually become manageable, and most HIV+ patients in the developed world die of other causes (cancer, aging, etc.) instead of AIDS. So I wouldn't be too sure.

And now HIV patients have a choice between manageable and treatable. For most of us, I think the choice would probably be obvious.

No, patients do not have this choice because no licensed physician would give them said choice. People here are talking as if BMT were this mundane thing that you can just decide you want to do some afternoon.

Re: Stem cell transplant has cured HIV infection, say doctors

#33

Post by joshuacc »

sliverstorm wrote: post #18
BluePoints wrote: post #2

Stem Cell Research must be allowed.

The difficulty with using HIV as your use-case argument is last I checked, most religious organizations considered HIV to be God's scourge on homosexuals. e.g. they are not particularly worried about getting rid of it. (I'm not just being snarky or sarcastic)

Perhaps, if by "most religious organizations" you mean "a great number of fundamentalist-leaning Christian sects." But that is very different from "most religious people" or even "most Christians."

For example, approximately 50% of Christians are Catholics, which definitely doesn't teach that. The same holds true for Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans and other mainstream Christian groups.

See Catholic Charities: http://www.caritas.org/activities/hiv_aids/sinethemba_a_cari...

See this official Vatican statement on AIDS: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/2003/doc...

Re: Stem cell transplant has cured HIV infection, say doctors

#34

Post by Luc »

sliverstorm wrote: post #18
BluePoints wrote: post #2

Stem Cell Research must be allowed.

The difficulty with using HIV as your use-case argument is last I checked, most religious organizations considered HIV to be God's scourge on homosexuals. e.g. they are not particularly worried about getting rid of it. (I'm not just being snarky or sarcastic)

Archbishop Leonard, the Catholic Primate of Belgium, considers the AIDS epidemic not at all a punishment from God, but 'a sort of intrinsic justice' for actions like promiscuity.

What a wonderful doctrine, huh...

Re: Stem cell transplant has cured HIV infection, say doctors

#35

Post by [deleted] »

carbocation wrote: post #32
mfukar wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now HIV patients have a choice between manageable and treatable. For most of us, I think the choice would probably be obvious.

No, patients do not have this choice because no licensed physician would give them said choice. People here are talking as if BMT were this mundane thing that you can just decide you want to do some afternoon.

[deleted]

Re: Stem cell transplant has cured HIV infection, say doctors

#36

Post by mfukar »

carbocation wrote: post #32
mfukar wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now HIV patients have a choice between manageable and treatable. For most of us, I think the choice would probably be obvious.

No, patients do not have this choice because no licensed physician would give them said choice. People here are talking as if BMT were this mundane thing that you can just decide you want to do some afternoon.

I'm not really sure what's the point you're trying to make. Bone marrow transplants are not some unproven treatment. Stem cell research generally seems troubling to some politicians; this specific application is probably not approved but I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be in the near future.

Re: Stem cell transplant has cured HIV infection, say doctors

#37

Post by eru »

bhickey wrote: post #28
rms wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's real, but not practical. The risk of death during a transplant like this is as high as 10%, because it involves completely knocking out the immune system.

I suspect that the mortality rate would be much lower amongst patients being treated for HIV. Bone marrow transplants as a therapy for leukemia requires killing the existing cells with radiation. This is completely sensible -- you've got some cancerous cells, so nuke everything and start over from the beginning. Confounding the mortality stats is the fact that individuals undergoing treatment are very sick from the s…

I read an article back a few years, about how when they do a normal organ transplant (like a kidney) the patient benefits enormously from also getting a bone marrow transplant from the same donor. For a transplant you shut down the immune system completely, and keep it in a subdued state forever afterwards. With the matching bone marrow they could re-start the immune system to a mixed state afterwards, that accepted the original organs and the donation.

Anybody remember that article? I'd like to find it again.

Re: Stem cell transplant has cured HIV infection, say doctors

#38

Post by maxharris »

rms wrote: post #31
JCThoughtscream wrote: post #4

If this doesn't turn out to be overblown sensationalism, then the team behind this (actual!) cure probably deserves a Nobel for their efforts and results.

They don't deserve a Nobel because the idea has been obvious in medicine for years. They just got very lucky in being able to deliver a confirmed CCR5 delta 32+ bone marrow transplant to someone with HIV in a medically responsible way. Curing HIV is an incredible thing to have accomplished but the confirmation of a successful surgery from 3 years ago doesn't advance the bounds of scientific knowledge as much as it wa…

> They don't deserve a Nobel because the idea has been obvious in medicine for years.

What's your science background/what's your degree in? This really wasn't obvious. It was an open question as to whether or not other cells that were latently infected could produce a new infection via the other co-receptor (CXCR4).

> They just got very lucky

To characterize their hard work as luck is unjust. Yes, patients don't always survive bone marrow transplants, and this patient is indeed lucky to have survived. But the dilligent effort of his physicians is deliberate! Remember that they had to screen a lot of potential donors (61, I believe) to find someone with enough HLA similarity and a homozygous CCR5delta32 genotype. You can call this luck, but it's really just hard and dilligent work. Out of a pool of around 60 million people (worldwide) homozygous for CCR5delta32, you can find someone with enough matching allotypes. (You do know that you don't need all of the allotypes to match, right? That increases the probablity right there. In some cases, a little imperfect matching is a good thing, because the resulting graft-vs-host effect can act against the cancer you're trying to treat. Doctors have been using this effect since the 80s.)

Re: Stem cell transplant has cured HIV infection, say doctors

#39

Post by ars »

pshapiro wrote: post #30
ars wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on your username are you Jewish? Because you'll be interested to know that Judaism not only permits embryonic stem cell research it actually encourages using the embryos rather than wasting them.

Nope, not Jewish. Only by stem cell. Religions are insufficient in some major ways. But they found time to include a clause about embryonic research, huh?

Are you looking for an answer or do you just want to be snarky?

Re: Stem cell transplant has cured HIV infection, say doctors

#40

Post by checoivan »

Groxx wrote: post #16
sukuriant wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget about adult stem cells, too. Those do count.

I didn't include those specifically because they're much harder to find: > Pluripotent adult stem cells are rare and generally small in number but can be found in a number of tissues including umbilical cord blood. Though I'm not sure if that has changed. I've generally gotten the impression that, while they can literally be found in every tissue, they're much harder to actually find, separate, and stimulate in usabl…

You've got it right. Not all stem cells are equal,there's CD33+,CD34+,etc. They can be found in many places but the amount of cells matter.

Umbilical coord blood is awesome cause it's full of cd34+, but even then, even the amount of a really good collection won't support a full adult transplant cause the techology to grow and multiple the sample isn't there yet.

~2 years ago the top notch tech would only double the amount of a really good sample ,which would be about 2 ml.

Post reply on HN