I'm happy for him, but at the same time I can't help but think that this could be a prelude to a zombie outbreak
Tommy Morrison was cured when it was discovered that he misdiagnosed with HIV. Ruined a possibly great boxing career.
The article says he has no replicating virus, but is his viral load absolute zero? I doubt it. Anybody with a measurable viral load, no matter how small, can still spread the disease, and there's no telling if this residual virus might flare up in future. To declare him out of the woods is naive.
Makes sense. The overwhelming majority of cells that HIV infects are derived from the bone marrow. Prior to a bone marrow transplant, the patient's own bone marrow is destroyed in order to remove all of their bone marrow-derived cells, effectively destroying their immune system. With this done, the patient's bone marrow is then replaced with donor marrow, which produces new (donor-derived) cells that repopulate the patient's immune system. If the donor marrow carries the HIV-immune trait, then all of the resulting cells will be HIV-immune and the patient will thus have no/few cells that are vulnerable to HIV infection. Of course, there is some evidence that HIV can replicate to a certain extent in non-bone marrow-derived cells, but with the CD4 T cell pool immune to the virus, that replication should be limited and not nearly to the same extent as before the treatment. But, as the article notes, a bone marrow transplant has certain risks as well, so it's not like we can just give every HIV patient a bone marrow transplant and call it a day.
With conventional treatment Viral load can be kept at undetectable levels although the virus hides dormant in other parts of the body and will return when treatment stops, I think this is the first time that it seems that even off of treatment there has been no sign of it returning, and they haven't found the virus where it normally hides.
Really interesting, but this is hardly a treatment method that can be applied to general practice at this point. It'll be fantastic for developing a better understanding of the condition though.
That's interesting. I just read about it on a bulletin board at my school. It's good that this helps work towards a cure, which will be found eventually, mark my words. Its bad that Bone marrow transplants don't work great all the time.
Can you patent it? No? Then no pharmecutical company will devote time, money, and research to this. It's not profitable for them.
Definitely worth the investment money for a medical school, hospital, or treatment centre to be able to offer the method though.
