HIV treatment it remains more of a wish than a reality. But it is true that we are closer to it than many years ago. There are already five people who consider themselves almost cured of the virus. The first was the late Timothy Ray Brown, known as the Berlin Patient. After him, four more arrived in different cities of the world, though only two, a patient from London and a patient from Düsseldorf, considered cured scientific consensus. They all agreed to have leukemia other than HIV. For this reason, an experimental treatment was used with them, aimed at stopping both pathologies. But at the moment it is not considered safe to investigate what happened to them in patients without leukemia. For this reason, a group of scientists from Oregon Health and Science University conducted a study aimed at analyzing this possible cure for HIV, analyzing the effects on monkeys.
In particular, for his research, which has just been published in immunityanalyzed this treatment in eight Mauritius crabeater monkeys. This species was chosen because it had previously been shown that they could receive stem cell transplantation, and this is what the treatment is based on.
These scientists wanted to understand what happens in the body of primates, monkeys or humans when they receive a stem cell transplant like the one that saved the Berlin patient and four other patients. Thus, they hope that in the future, patients will not need leukemia. You don’t even need stem cell transplant. The goal is to cure HIV. with simple injection. This is still a long way off, but thanks to the discoveries made in this study with monkeys, we can say that we are one step closer to achieving this.
What does a stem cell transplant have to do with curing HIV?
Both Brown and four other patients developed leukemia after being diagnosed with AIDS. For this reason, it was decided to transplant them bone marrow stem cellsas is usually the case in people with this type of cancer.
In the case of the Berlin patient, a match was simply found. there was no intention of curing him of HIV. But, to everyone’s surprise, once the transplant is complete, there were no traces of the virus in his body. Not even over the years.
By testing donated blood, it was found out what could be the reason. This person had a mutation in CCR5 gene, which usually serves as a cell gateway for HIV. Because the gene is mutated, the virus cannot enter cells, so people with this mutation are resistant to AIDS.
Maybe at replace blood cells Brown with a donor, the virus couldn’t keep infecting him. There is not even a viral reservoir left, which is the part of the viral load that remains latent, waiting for the cells to re-infect. This is the reason why retroviral treatment must be used throughout life. They can attack infectious particles, but not the reservoir, so treatment should not be abandoned. Brown was also free of the viral reservoir, so it was decided to do the same with other patients. There were four of them, with very good results, but it was necessary. learn more about the procedure. This is where monkeys come into play.
Monkeys to better understand the infection
For this study, eight monkeys were divided into two groups. All had HIV, but only the first group received stem cell transplantation from healthy monkeys. The other four who served control groupThey didn’t get a transplant.
Two of the four animals treated, two were cured of HIV. And not only this. They were also prevented from dying from graft-versus-host diseaseso they are still healthy today, four years after the procedure.
They have become ideal subjects of study to see how transplantation can be turned into a cure for HIV. Once they started testing the animals, the study authors saw that shedding of the virus continued. few steps.
First, it is not only a matter of a donor mutation, as was originally thought. In macaques, it has been observed that the donor’s own blood cells, when the cells of a sick monkey are recognized as foreign, they attack them destroying the virus in the process. This is the first wave of attack, but mutation is also necessary, as was seen in the two treated monkeys that were not cured. Or at least somehow block the entrance to the receiver.
On the other hand, it was observed that elimination of the virus did not occur uniformly throughout the body. The first HIV disappeared from blood samples taken from extremities Monkeys After lymph nodealso starting from the limbs and ending with the abdominal cavity.
This explains why it is sometimes believed that some people are cured, but the virus eventually returns. Perhaps only peripheral blood samples were taken from the arm, and there was still a reservoir in the nodes.
What is all this for?
To find a cure for HIV, one must first understand the mechanisms that led to the cure of the five patients. Thanks to this monkey study, researchers now know that virus attack follow a few steps so that gradual monitoring can be done to make sure everything is going well.
Human clinical trials will no longer be done blindly, but with much more knowledge of the facts. So no, we don’t have a cure for HIV yet, but it’s getting one step closer. I hope the day will come when there will be no patients from Berlin, patients from Düsseldorf or patients from London, but only patients. Because there are so many cured that they do not need to be given special names.
Source: Hiper Textual
