Still cured?

[OKJOE]

The guy who claimed to be cured just said he still is, but I've seen a lot of other reports saying that is untrue. What are your thoughts about this guy, fact or fiction? Also if the procedure is as dangerous as they say would you still do it if you were or are poz?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/25/timothy-ray-brown-cured-hiv-aids-berlin-patient_n_1703941.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay%20Voices

[HungLatinDom]

I would not do it. If I get leukemia, sure, I would, otherwise, I am willing to wait 20 years until a real cure. At 50 I still would have 2-3 more decades of life.

I think he is mostly cured, there might be pockets of virus inside him, but if the virus cannot replicate in his t cells, then how serious it really is? We'll find out

[bearbandit]

We may be looking at a genuine cure, in which case good luck to him, but from all I've read the cure costs in monetary terms more than a lifetime's supply of antiretrovirals, so I can't see health insurers or national health services straining at the bit to fund it. The good news here is not so much the the guy reckons that he has been cured, but, if a functional cure has been achieved, that it's been proven to be possible, so that the next step is to find a more cost-effective way of achieving the same ends.

It's a bit like the US approving truvada for pre-exposure prophylaxis. FTC and tenofovir are pretty potent and toxic chemicals - I should know: tenofovir came within a few weeks of killing me. The danger of PREP lies in the people who think they can just pop a pill occasionally and then have their sex bare with no risk. Way to build up drug resistance if you do get HIV. Truvada has proved that PREP is possible, we now need to find a safer alternative.

[rawTOP]

I think I heard the procedure he had has a 30% death rate. Personally I'd rather live with HIV.

[toddbb]

according to doctors with whom I've spoken and who work in the field, the stem cell treatment has limits and is very expensive (as someone noted above). However, they said there is research going on which builds on this work in areas like gene therapy that show some promise. I don't think anyone knows where this is going. My guess is that in 10-20 years we'll look back and be pleasantly surprised by the advances but no one's crystal ball is that good.

[OKJOE]

I think I heard the procedure he had has a 30% death rate. Personally I'd rather live with HIV.

Depending on the resistance of the strain I think I would agree with you. I remember when this story first broke way back there and they said the procedure wouldn't work for very many people. Bearbandit makes a great point about it being a good first step though.

[TattPig]

I heard him speak at a conference a few weeks ago. He said that he suffered some brain damage as a result of some of the treatments he had. He read his speech a little haltingly and ad-libbed a bit, almost like someone on lithium (from my amateur diagnosis). But considering all he's been through (the HIV cure was a side benefit of a procedure for another problem), he seemed otherwise fine.

I don't think I'd opt for it; it's rough.

[HungLatinDom]

The procedure is not really complicated, doctors know how to do it. The twist here is that instead of getting a regular bone marrow transplant (no stem cells involved on this treatment, maybe in the future), they got bone marrow from a compatible donor who had a mutation that rendered him immune to HIV. This mutation is more much common in people with Northern European ancestry (but still quite rare), so not sure how easy will be to get a compatible donor who also has the mutation, specially for people like me, not from Northern European stock.

I'd say that the basic elemnts of the cure are already there: enzymes or drugs to unwind the virus from our own DNA, viral vectors, the attack point to render the cells unaccessible. But we still need to figure out how to make that safe and deliver it into the body.