HIV and Bone Marrow Transplants. 09/09

Lyn's Comment: A person living with HIV also had leukaemia (a type of blood cancer). As treatment for his leukaemia, he required a bone marrow transplant, an expensive and potentially dangerous treatment.

Doctors know that some people have a gene mutation that helps the body resist HIV. (A gene mutation can be explained as a variation in the instruction part of cells.) Doctors chose one of these people as a donor for the bone marrow transplant.

Twenty months after this bone marrow transplant, no sign of the HI Virus can be found in the patient's body.

Although bone marrow transplants are too dangerous and expensive to become a general treatment option for HIV, it does open exciting new research options in gene therapy.

Read news reports on this development: