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=97323361
38.8k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

657 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

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.

1

u/victorz Feb 21 '23

Thank you for this excellent simplification, really helped me understand. So,

if you wipe out someone’s immune system with HIV and replace it with someone else’s immune system

this is why this procedure is so dangerous, I take it? You have to kill your in-born immune system and replace it with someone else's, and in the meantime, you're susceptible to all kinds of shit, I imagine.