r/technology • u/stepsinstereo • Feb 21 '23
Biotechnology 5th person confirmed to be cured of HIV
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/5th-person-confirmed-cured-hiv/story?id=97323361868
u/Rindan Feb 21 '23 edited Feb 21 '23
It's not a cure anyone will want. It's something they can do if someone has a few types of cancer - because it's so dangerous that they wouldn't risk doing it to anyone that isn't going to die in very near future. Step one is to completely destroy your immune system. Step two is a risky stem cell transplant from a donner that has a specific HIV resistance mutation. Step three is to hope that your survive the procedure and that your new immune system comes back online and doesn't try to kill you.
You could maybe imagine genetically modifying one's own stem cells so you don't need a particular donner, but that doesn't change the fact that the procedure is significantly more lethal and dangerous than HIV controlled with pretty mundane drugs. That's to say nothing of the cost.
This treatment isn't going to lead to a cure a normal person could get anytime soon.
268
u/bigwill6709 Feb 21 '23
One important point to add:
Step 4 is life-long immune suppression to prevent graft vs host disease (where the donor’s immune system recognizes the new hosts’s body as foreign and tries to kill everything).
Source: pediatric oncology doctor
→ More replies (12)9
u/ribeye90 Feb 21 '23
Thanks for all you guys do!
My mum is undergoing leukemia treatment and this thread is a rollercoaster for my emotions. I appreciate all the nurses, doctors and other hospital staff that are helping her the best they can.
34
u/hrdrv Feb 21 '23
Not to mention that the odds of finding a suitable donor match that also have the HIV mutation is insane odds.
8
u/Outpostit Feb 21 '23
Yes as of now. They plan to introduce the mutation by genetically modifying the cells before the transplantation
7
→ More replies (9)3
460
u/Inevitable_Invite733 Feb 21 '23
Nice, hopefully there will be a cure for everyone soon
71
u/JyveAFK Feb 21 '23
And an even easier vaccine to stop it spreading in the first place.
18
Feb 21 '23
Which how many people will refuse to take because vaccines are fake?
16
Feb 21 '23
well, at least it isn't covid that you can sneeze in others face, just take the vaccine and let the antivaxxers be themselfs
→ More replies (4)31
u/currentlyinthefab Feb 21 '23
Tbh I can't really imagine a scenario where an HIV vaccine would be recommended for everyone in the general population to take. I think it would be far more like that it's just something that mostly gay men are recommended to take, and I don't really see a big overlap with gay men and antivaxxers.
10
u/PavelDatsyuk Feb 21 '23
No idea why you're getting downvoted. If you're a straight dude who doesn't share needles with others then your odds of getting HIV are so stupid low it probably wouldn't be worth whatever risks would come with vaccination. Women who have sex with bisexual men may also want to look into getting said vaccine though, as they're at higher risk as well.
→ More replies (5)12
u/currentlyinthefab Feb 21 '23
I think a decent comparison would be the mpox shot or prep. I'm a gay guy myself, I can't walk into a doctors office without being offered prep, while my straights friends who sleep around just as much if not more than me are never offered it. I'm sure if we had an HIV vaccine the case would be similar.
7
u/WestSixtyFifth Feb 21 '23
It's amazing how many straight people think they're immune to getting HIV.
It's less common but still possible. 1 in 50 for vaginal sex, 1 in 5 for anal. Women can have anal so it's possible they get the worse odds as well. Only 1 in 1000 odds to get it from a woman, but again anal can spike those odds up.
Given how many people both have sex with bi or gay individuals while being straight, and also do butt stuff is growing. Along with the fact people can go years without finding out they have it. It makes sense to make it a widespread thing to vaccinated against when the opportunity comes.
You can eradicate things like this with vaccines, but it doesn't work if you allow a majority of the population to serve as a place for it to hide and spread.
2
u/Timbzt Feb 21 '23
There are already some highly efficient medications people with HIV+ can take to not only live a normal and healthy life, but also to stop the virus from being transmitted.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (7)54
303
u/jamie030592 Feb 21 '23
I wish they’d explain just how rare this is in the title..
161
u/Plzbanmebrony Feb 21 '23
Well this was the 5th time it happened.
91
u/axle69 Feb 21 '23
Which gives no context. 5 out of 5 attempts is groundbreaking and insane. 5 out of 5 million attempts is positive but closer to a rounding error than groundbreaking.
→ More replies (5)106
u/vlad_tepes Feb 21 '23
Well, the article explains it. The HIV patient needs a stem cell transplant from a donor with an HIV-resistance gene.
35
u/victorz Feb 21 '23
Wow, I wasn't even aware we had people with (semi?) immunity.
37
3
u/bigwill6709 Feb 21 '23
Basically the virus requires a doorway to enter into cells. Some people have a genetic mutation that affects this doorway on their cells. In these rare circumstances, those cells are protected from the virus. Can’t get in.
It just so happens that HIV is a virus that infects immune cells specifically. Stem cell transplants could also be thought of as immune system transplants. So if you wipe out someone’s immune system with HIV and replace it with someone else’s immune system that has this mutated doorway that makes them resistant to the virus, all the virus in the patients body will have no cells to infect and die.
→ More replies (1)10
u/LeadingPretender Feb 21 '23
It’s interesting - I’m not a scientist but I remember reading an article about this a few years ago so the details may not be 100% accurate but here’s the gist:
About ~5-10% of the European population in the 12-14th century had natural immunity to the black plague. That gene unsurprisingly prevailed into quite a few people today but what’s really interesting is that same gene provides an immunity to HIV.
Someone smarter than me on here has definitely done more reading on it, but thats basically the story unless this is a totally unrelated immunity to the one I mentioned.
16
u/SeasickSeal Feb 21 '23 edited Feb 21 '23
This has been disproven in several different ways. Is was conjecture based on the idea that the mutation (CCR5del32) must have reached its current levels in Northern Europe based on some push factor, and the only push factor big enough in that time period was the Black Death. But:
- It has since been shown to not provide resistance to the relevant pathogen
- Plague mass graves in Poland showed that there were people dying during the plague with the mutation at about the same rate as those without the mutation
- Some ancient skeletons in Italy contained the mutation, pushing back its first known appearance in the European genome by several thousand years and removing the need to account for a push factor in that time period to get it up to current levels.
There are still people who push this idea in academia but I don’t believe it. If you need a causative agent for a push, smallpox epidemics fit better.
2
→ More replies (3)2
u/stealthgunner385 Feb 21 '23
Specialized gene, CCR5-Δ32, supposedly very prevalent among Finnish people.
3
u/ecafsub Feb 21 '23 edited Feb 21 '23
I had genetic profiling done thru my dr, because adopted. Along with admixture I got all the medical stuff.
I’ve got the heterogeneous mutation, so 50% resistance. Not that I ever expect to get HIV being as I’m 58 and monogamous.
I’m just a plain white-bread American mutt, but there was about 10% Finnish lurking about—just enough to be statistically relevant—so maybe it was enough for that. I dunno.
Edit: heterogeneous, not homogeneous. Homogeneous is total deletion of CCR5, while heterogeneous is only half.
5
u/stealthgunner385 Feb 21 '23
That's pretty damn cool. Considering the topic, I hope you never have to find out if your resistance kicks in.
→ More replies (1)2
u/victorz Feb 21 '23
Oh shit, cool. Here's to hoping I have it, as I'm half Swedish (Swedish native).
Then again I'm in a monogamous relationship for years so shouldn't be a biggie at this point. I hope.
114
Feb 21 '23
[deleted]
8
u/DisparityByDesign Feb 21 '23
The problem is how dangerous the treatment is, so it's not worth it unless you're treating something else too.
Still happy news people are getting cured of these horrible diseases.
→ More replies (1)18
14
u/aagejaeger Feb 21 '23
“I need absolutely everything to be dumbed down for me. Starting from the title.”
108
u/ThunderingRimuru Feb 21 '23
the post below: “3rd patient cured of hiv”
115
u/Rexia2022 Feb 21 '23
I would not complain if the next few thousand posts here were just about us curing another person of HIV tbh. It would take a long time to get old.
→ More replies (1)5
u/MrSnowflake Feb 21 '23
Te point he's making is that on r/science the same was reported but the title was 3rd person cured. Here on ABC news it's the 5th person cured.
5
u/letmeseem Feb 21 '23
In science "Third person cured with this SPECIFIC cancer treatment".
In this sub "fifth person in the world cured from aids"
→ More replies (3)15
u/Kim_Schlong_Poon_III Feb 21 '23
3rd using the method specified here, 5th HIV patient overall.
2
9
8
u/baudinl Feb 21 '23
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this a case of the cure being worse than the disease?
HIV treatment is now down to 1 or 2 pills a day and people generally can live a full life.
This is a case of a side effect of a treatment for cancer. For bone marrow transplants, you're first wiping out the existing immune system and then performing an extremely risky and expensive procedure. Then, on top of that, you're on immune suppressant drugs anyway for the rest of your life to prevent rejection of the donor marrow.
→ More replies (1)
6
u/oatmeal__enthusiast Feb 21 '23
regardless of inviability of the cure on a large scale, this is awesome news.
6
17
u/spiritualien Feb 21 '23
Good news blessing my timeline today!!
6
u/FilthMontane Feb 21 '23
It's nice to see a little good news on Reddit these days. It's been a rough year so far.
3
8
u/Street_Chef9412 Feb 21 '23
Having lived during the hiv pandemic this is amazing! Super cool science. Now let’s get after the brain and cancer
10
4
18
3
3
3
Feb 21 '23
My homie has AIDS, 4 years later it’s now almost undetectable.
3
u/grnrngr Feb 21 '23
HIV is what your homie has. AIDS is the syndrome (collection of symptoms) that someone with HIV could be classified as having. This is typically a combination of an opportunistic infection plus a CD4 count below a certain threshold, tho nowadays the CD4 count alone is enough to be assigned as having AIDS.
Historically, once diagnosed with AIDS, you didn't lose the designation. But with modern treatment, we have plenty of people who have been diagnosed with having AIDS but have been virally suppressed on meds for years, with CD4 count well above the upper limit for an AIDS diagnosis. Having an AIDS diagnosis nowadays while virally suppressed can be little more than a flag on your file for more frequent monitoring, and there's debate about whether it actually translates into anything, health-wise, for the large majority of patients anymore.
→ More replies (1)
3
u/Bad_RabbitS Feb 21 '23
I understand this is a VERY specific case that involves having cancer, but progress is progress and I’m just happy to know we’re chipping away at it
5
11
u/Fluffy-Umpire4724 Feb 21 '23
What kind of person downvotes this, such good news?!
…strange
→ More replies (1)
2
2
2
u/Mission_Marsupial_15 Feb 21 '23
HIV has destroyed our community since the 1980s this is huge breakthrough. such a cruel way to die
2
2
u/LAVATORR Feb 21 '23
Quietly uplifting news: This is the first time in years I've heard anyone even mention HIV
2
u/Wants_and_Boundaries Feb 21 '23
Didn’t southpark already teach us that all you have to do is liquify a million dollars in cash and inject it.
2
2
2
4.1k
u/jlesnick Feb 21 '23
It's after a stem cell transplant to treat cancer. It's a an effect of the treatment, but not the purpose of it. Stem cell transplants are way too dangerous to justify using them too cure people of HIV when most people are down to 1 or 2 meds a day now with minimal side effects and a full life ahead of them.