Recently a sensationalized story involving a potential “cure” for the HIV virus has been making the rounds in the news. As I’ve usually found with science reporting in the mainstream media, the truth is somewhat less groundbreaking than was reported.
The case cited in the article is that of an American man in Berlin, Germany. He apparently was suffering with the HIV virus, and underwent a bone marrow transplant to attempt to eliminate the virus from his system. The interesting bit is that he received a transplant from someone who was immune to the HIV virus. These types of mutations of the gene that makes the protein that HIV uses to gain entry to one’s system were discovered in the late 1990s. After the treatment, the patient stayed off of retroviral drugs, and has since been HIV-free.
On the surface this seems like a really amazing breakthrough in the research for a cure. However, upon closer inspection, its actually not all that its been cracked up to be. The process by which a patient is prepared to receive a bone marrow transplant involves essentially destroying their immune system with radiation. This is a taxing process for the patient to go through and most HIV patients, already sick with the disease, could probably not undergo such a procedure safely.
Furthermore, finding a bone marrow donor for a patient is difficult enough. This procedure requires you find a donor that not only is a match for the patient, but also inherited (from both parents) the mutation of the gene that grants them immunity to HIV. This would simply not scale well out from one patient to the HIV-positive population as a whole.