Wonder Cures: A Development in the Making for HIV-AIDS
By: Zed Benedict Beloy
Diseases are pretty much encountered every day. Some are harmless, and others do minimal to slightly threatening damage, but some are very lethal to the human body, even leading the person who has it to die. This is why we have cures and remedies at our side. Certain people create them for our convenience, like vaccines or antibiotics. However, it is unfortunate that not all diseases have a conventional antidote. This is the case with HIV and AIDS.
HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is a pathogen that specializes in attacking the body’s immune system. Damage to this system will reduce your overall protection from other pathogens, therefore, putting you at the risk of getting seriously sick. It can be acquired through sexual contact or blood or from mother to child during pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding. If this is not appropriately treated, the infection could lead to AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), a chronic and life-endangering condition where your immune system has difficulties in combatting other pathogens you encounter on a daily basis. There is no definite cure, but it can be treated with medications that hinder the spread of the virus in your body and prevent further issues. However, recently, a certain event will likely change the whole idea of treating HIV/AIDS. Articles are popping all over the internet on this marvelous occurrence. What may this big occasion be? Well, the first case of an HIV/AIDS case being cured from a stem cell transplant was reported on February 15, 2022. A U.S. patient with leukemia has become the first woman and the third person to date to be cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant from a donor who was naturally resistant to the virus that causes AIDS, researchers reported on Tuesday (Inquirer, 2022). An American research team reported that it has possibly cured HIV in a woman for the first time. Building on past successes, as well as failures, in the HIV-cure research field, these scientists used a cutting-edge stem cell transplant method that they expect will expand the pool of people who could receive similar treatment to several dozen annually (NBCNews, 2022).
The case of a 64-year-old woman of mixed race, presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Denver, is also the first involving umbilical cord blood, a newer approach that may make the treatment available to more people. Since receiving the cord blood to treat her acute myeloid leukemia — cancer that starts in blood-forming cells in the bone marrow — the woman has been in remission and free of the virus for 14 months, without the need for potent HIV treatments known as antiretroviral therapy. The two prior cases occurred in males — one white and one Latino — who had received adult stem cells, which are more frequently used in bone marrow transplants. “This is now the third report of a cure in this setting, and the first in a woman living with HIV,” Sharon Lewin, President-Elect of the International AIDS Society, said in a statement (Inquirer, 2022). The case is part of a larger U.S.-backed study led by Dr. Yvonne Bryson of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and Dr. Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. It aims to follow 25 people with HIV who undergo a transplant with stem cells taken from umbilical cord blood for the treatment of cancer and other serious conditions. Patients in the trial first undergo chemotherapy to kill off the cancerous immune cells. Doctors then transplant stem cells from individuals with a specific genetic mutation in which they lack receptors used by the virus to infect cells. Scientists believe these individuals then develop an immune system resistant to HIV. Lewin said bone marrow transplants are not a viable strategy to cure most people living with HIV. But the report “confirms that a cure for HIV is possible and further strengthens using gene therapy as a viable strategy for an HIV cure,” she said (Inquirer, 2022).
Many people who suffer from this condition will be overjoyed and happy. However, such medication takes a lot of time and money, a downside to most medical services for that subject. But over time, the process will become cheaper and more efficient. However, when this time is is pretty vague. But let’s not lose sight of the possibilities and not lose hope in the future of this medicine. This will revolutionize the medical field, but this will require time and money to develop. But this just means progress is needed to advance our research on these things so we can be certain that there will no longer be incurable diseases in the years ahead. And as a community, supporting the medical projects will be very motivating and empowering to the researchers. As Hippocrates once said, “Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love for humanity.”
