Tweets for Today
Feb. 11th, 2009 12:10 am- 14:38 @agirlcalledbob Thanks for the birthday wishes :-) #
- 22:05 @JDahveed Thanks for the B-Day Wishes :-) #
- 22:06 @agirlcalledbob you're one of my only multi-location bday peeps :-> #
"The patient is fine," said Dr. Gero Hutter of Charite Universitatsmedizin Berlin in Germany. "Today, two years after his transplantation, he is still without any signs of HIV disease and without antiretroviral medication."
The case was first reported in November, and the new report is the first official publication of the case in a medical journal. Hutter and a team of medical professionals performed the stem cell transplant on the patient, an American living in Germany, to treat the man's leukemia, not the HIV itself.
However, the team deliberately chose a compatible donor who has a naturally occurring gene mutation that confers resistance to HIV. The mutation cripples a receptor known as CCR5, which is normally found on the surface of T cells, the type of immune system cells attacked by HIV.
The mutation is known as CCR5 delta32 and is found in 1 percent to 3 percent of white populations of European descent.