Posts Tagged ‘HIV’
The Miracles of Medicine
Before transplantation of stem cell, the patient underwent chemotherapy, which destroyed most of immune cells, and took immunosuppressant drugs to prevent rejection of new stem cells.
Antiretroviral therapy was applied the day of transplantation, with patients receiving a second stem cell transplant thirteen days after the first.
If healing was achieved in this patient, there is the possibility of investigating a cure for HIV with stem cells. The researchers believe the findings show the importance of eliminating the production of the gene CCR5 cells, either by transplantation or gene therapy.
If the attempts prove successful, the researchers say that therapy should be reserved for people with no choice of treatment the bone marrow transplant or stem cell.
Leukemia and HIV Treatment
A stem cell transplant appears to have cured Timothy Ray Brown of the virus that causes AIDS, but doctors warned that this could not be a method for widespread use.
The patient is an HIV positive man who developed leukemia, was treated successfully and then saw the return of the disease in 2007, so that necessitated a transplant of stem cells.
In 2007, the U.S. 44 years based in Berlin, received bone marrow from a donor who had natural resistance to HIV. This was possible thanks to the genetic profile that makes the co-receptor gene CCR5 cells absent.
The Life Cycle of HIV
For the viruses to reproduce, they must infect a cell. Technically speaking, viruses are not alive: they are like a kind of disembodied brain.
To form new viruses, must hijack a cell and use it to produce them. Just as your body constantly produces new skin cells or blood, usually every cell produces new proteins to stay alive and reproduce.
Viruses hide their own DNA into the DNA of the cell and then, when the cell tries to produce new proteins, it also creates new virus accidentally. HIV mostly infects cells of the immune system.
Infection: There are different kinds of cells have on their surface receptor proteins known as CD4. HIV searches for cells that have CD4 surface receptors, because this particular protein enables the virus to bind to the cell.
Although HIV infects a large variety of cells, their primary purpose is the T4 lymphocyte (also known as helper T cell “), a type of white blood cell that has lots of CD4 receptors. The T4 cell is responsible for notifying your immune system invaders that have entered the system.
Replication: Once HIV binds to a cell, its DNA hidden within the DNA of the cell. Thus, the cell becomes a sort of HIV factory.