American specialists carried out the world’s first transplant in an AIDS patient, in whom they used umbilical cord blood for the procedure, the AP agency reported. Thanks to this, it can be completely cured.
The transplant took place a few weeks ago, but it was only announced now, at a conference on the use of umbilical cord blood.
Dr. Lawrence Petz, medical director of StemCyte, a cord blood banking company, said HIV infection was not the primary reason for the transplant. However, he did not provide the disease and who the patient undergoing the procedure was. He only stated that it was too early to do so, because it would only be possible to say something about its effects in a few months.
A second patient with HIV, a resident of Madrid, is also being prepared for a cord blood transplant. The procedure is to be performed this year.
Dr. Petz claims that he studied 17. of stored umbilical cord blood samples, and in 102 of them, he detected a genetic mutation that made their carriers resistant to HIV infection. A transplant can therefore make people living with this virus resistant to this microbe.
The fact that a complete cure from AIDS is possible is demonstrated by the example of 46-year-old Timothy Ray Brown from the USA, who was both sick with AIDS and with leukemia. In February 2007, he underwent a bone marrow transplant.
During the procedure, doctors used bone marrow taken from a person with a genetic mutation immunizing to HIV. It occurs in only 1 percent. Caucasian people (even more rarely in individuals of other races). In banks of potential bone marrow donors, 70 people with this mutation were detected, one of which had a similar tissue compatibility to Brown.
It has recently been re-tested and found to have no symptoms of AIDS. HIV was also not detected in his body. “I hope that I will not be the only person cured of AIDS in the world, that other people will also be cured,” he told reporters.
Reuters reported that a similar transplant was also performed in two other HIV-positive men with lymphoma, a cancer that originates in the lymphatic system. In their case, however, the bone marrow donors were not genetically immune to HIV. Nevertheless, they show no symptoms of the disease. They found a low level of this germ after surgery, but were given antiretroviral drugs to destroy them, and over time, the infected immune cells were replaced by new, donor-free, virus-free cells.
Dr. Petz believes that more people with HIV will benefit from an umbilical cord blood transplant with a protective genetic mutation. It does not require such a precise selection of the recipient’s histocompatibility as in the case of bone marrow. Both of these tissues contain stem cells from which the immune system is reborn. (PAP)
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