Cure for AIDS on the Horizon?

Reuters and the Associated Press just recently released articles about a leukemia patient in Germany, also HIV positive, who received a bone marrow transplant from a donor that had an immunity towards HIV. Now, two years later, doctors cannot detect any signs of HIV and the patient appears to be HIV negative. The patient has been off of antiretroviral medications for this two year period. However, the procedure is not at all sufficient to be used as a cure for AIDS at this stage. Below are excerpts from the Associated Press' article.

This isn't the first time marrow transplants have been attempted for treating AIDS or HIV infection. In 1999, an article in the journal Medical Hypotheses reviewed the results of 32 attempts reported between 1982 and 1996. In two cases, HIV was apparently eradicated, the review reported...

As Huetter [physician treating patient for leukemia] — who is a hematologist, not an HIV specialist — prepared to treat the patient's leukemia with a bone marrow transplant, he recalled that some people carry a genetic mutation that seems to make them resistant to HIV infection. If the mutation, called Delta 32, is inherited from both parents, it prevents HIV from attaching itself to cells by blocking CCR5, a receptor that acts as a kind of gateway...

Roughly one in 1,000 Europeans and Americans have inherited the mutation from both parents, and Huetter set out to find one such person among donors that matched the patient's marrow type. Out of a pool of 80 suitable donors, the 61st person tested carried the proper mutation.

Before the transplant, the patient endured powerful drugs and radiation to kill off his own infected bone marrow cells and disable his immune system — a treatment fatal to between 20 and 30 percent of recipients.

He was also taken off the potent drugs used to treat his AIDS. Huetter's team feared that the drugs might interfere with the new marrow cells' survival. They risked lowering his defenses in the hopes that the new, mutated cells would reject the virus on their own.

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases in the U.S., said the procedure was too costly and too dangerous to employ as a firstline cure. But he said it could inspire researchers to pursue gene therapy as a means to block or suppress HIV.

"It helps prove the concept that if somehow you can block the expression of CCR5, maybe by gene therapy, you might be able to inhibit the ability of the virus to replicate," Fauci said.

So, while not a cure for HIV/AIDS all together, these developments do offer hope that a cure is possible with more research and trials.

For the full article from the Associated Press, please click here.

America Wins

On Tuesday, November 4, 2008, Barack Hussein Obama was elected President of the United States, set to take office on January 20, 2009.

Here is his speech:

Crisis in the Congo

On Friday, the BBC reported that refugee camps in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo had been forcibly evacuated, looted, and burned. 50,000 people were displaced by the destruction, and a million people are estimated to be have displaced by the general conflict. Lootings, murders, and rapes were reported, mostly perpetrated by Congolese troops (although both sides have their hands dirty).

Background

The area has been unstable since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. General Laurent Nkunda leads the rebel faction and has said that he is trying to protect his Tutsi community from Hutu rebels. (The Hutus killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the genocide.) Nkunda is very likely receiving support from the Rwandan government under Tutsi president Paul Kagame. Rwanda has denied allegations of supporting Nkunda, but has overtly invaded DR Congo twice, including once in a five-year war that also brought in Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Uganda.

Other complicating factors are the ethnic diversity of the area, which is home to at least six ethnic groups, and its mineral wealth. The region has gold and coltan, which is used to make cell phones, and Nkunda is unhappy with a $5 billion deal between China and the Congolese government granting the Chinese access to the region.

A cease-fire in the civil war was signed in January, but the Congolese government was either unable or unwilling to prevent a third Hutu faction from using its territory, and the conflict reignited in August.

A Humanitarian Crisis

In the past ten years, five million people have died and another one million have been displaced. Food and water are scarce, and aid agencies' handouts have caused stampedes. A UN aid convoy was able to pass from Goma through Congolese and rebel lines to Rutshuru to deliver medical supplies and water purification tablets to refugees. However, many have fled into the forest, where aid cannot reach them.

Secretary General Ban ki-Moon will travel to East Africa to help resolve the crisis. Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has called for an increase in the size and the power of the UN peacekeeping force in the Congo. The Mission de l'Organisation des Nations Unies en RD Congo (MONUC) has 17,000 peacekeepers in the region and is the UN's largest peacekeeping mission.

What You Can Do

Donate to the UN Refugee Agency or to Oxfam, and write to your Representative and Senators.