[HN Gopher] Woman appears cured of HIV after umbilical-cord bloo... ___________________________________________________________________ Woman appears cured of HIV after umbilical-cord blood transplant Author : nabaraz Score : 238 points Date : 2022-02-15 17:24 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.wsj.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com) | Animats wrote: | Wasn't this done once before via a bone marrow transplant? | Kognito wrote: | Yes, a few times if I recall correctly. It's just not | particularly accessible treatment (for HIV) as it requires the | complete destruction of the host immune system and essentially | 're-growing' a new one - hence this is usually a pleasant side- | effect of treating certain cancers. | phkahler wrote: | IIRC that procedure has something like a 50/50 chance of not | working and leaving the patient dead with no immune system. | It's a hail Marry treatment for cancers that are about to | kill you anyway. Really cool that using the right donor can | cure HIV, but not useful as a general treatment at any cost | due to the high failure rate. | peter303 wrote: | Article says this is the 5th time. The headline is incorrect. | ianhawes wrote: | This is amazing news. My only hope is that the recipient has been | thoroughly vetted with a complete background check and panel | interview to determine if they are worthy of such a cure[0]. | | /s | | [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/health/pig-heart- | transpla... | 999900000999 wrote: | I actually don't get the outrage on this, anyone willing to | undergo an experimental procedure should be held as a hero. | | If this country didn't have an absolutely horrible criminal | justice system, I would love something where inmates can sign | up for experimental procedures in exchange for a full pardon. | But knowing America, this was just encourage prosecutors to | push inmates to get unnecessary procedures. | [deleted] | williamtrask wrote: | Downvoting - I don't support the idea that the criminal justice | system should extend to the opportunity to be cured from | certain diseases, particularly so long after the fact. It's a | dangerous precedent. | appletrotter wrote: | you missed the /s | nefitty wrote: | The sarcasm squelched the intent of what you meant. | DoreenMichele wrote: | (stem cell) _Transplants, which are risky and costly, are | unlikely to be an option for HIV patients other than those who | need them for treatment for diseases like cancer,_ | | Made me wonder if fasting might help. A quick search found | anecdotal support for "definite _maybe_ ". | | https://www.quora.com/Can-prolonged-fasting-help-fight-HIV-A... | lopis wrote: | Hiv lives in your imune memory cells. I guess if you starve | yourself into they die, you could get rid of it. Sounds drastic | though. | DoreenMichele wrote: | I didn't say _get rid of it._ I said _help._ And I provided a | supporting link. | Saint_Genet wrote: | A Quara link full of anecdotal evidence isn't really | support for your thesis. | DoreenMichele wrote: | It's not a _thesis._ It 's a comment on a discussion | board. | valarauko wrote: | It's clear that the parent comment is using "thesis" = | "premise/claim" in this context, and it's a reasonable | use of the word. | DoreenMichele wrote: | It's an unreasonable standard though, one to which I seem | to frequently be held for bullshit reasons that appear to | me to boil down to "We refuse to believe that you know | anything about health topics and also require you in | specific to meet a higher standard than other posters | just making conversation." | | It's a means to gatekeep me out of medical discussion | because people don't like the idea that I'm getting | healthier when doctors say that cannot be done and rather | than engage in meaningful discussion, I fairly often | receive a dismissive pile on of replies in a way that I | do not believe is the norm for HN. | | I don't have to defend it or prove a claim. I didn't make | a claim. I stated as clearly as I know how that it made | me wonder x and so I did a search. | | This should not be drama of any sort. Other people | routinely make conversation on medical topics and aren't | given a hard time for it. Other people in this discussion | are making conversation about donating cord blood to | research. | | No one is required to be a medical professional to | participate in medical discussion here. No one is | required to defend their interest in such subjects. | | Except apparently me. Probably because of my personal | situation and people having some issue with that. | valarauko wrote: | I think that's an incredibly uncharitable take from this | thread. Almost none of the people here are medical | professionals, nor do I think most people here are | familiar enough with usernames to target you in | particular. You opinion is just as valuable as any others | here. | | If anything, at least in this case I can see that | providing a Quora page as "supporting link" works against | you - because of the low quality of most Quora content. | You mused about a possibility, and the comment engaged | with your point at face value with a very reasonable | response. They did not ask you to meet a "higher | standard" or provide evidence for your idea. You | escalated the discussion from there by suggesting that | the Quora page is "supporting" - which it really isn't. | Making conversation is fine, but if you're going to try | to back up your ideas with links, its natural that people | will engage with the validity of the source. If you'd | linked to a publication, for example, they'd have to | engage with the science of it. In this case since its | Quora, what's there to engage with? Anecdotes tell us | nothing - perhaps 99.95% of people who tried it had no | improvement and just didn't talk about it. This is not | gatekeeping, nor are you being targeted, at least in this | specific case. If you'd shared your own experience, that | would give us something to discuss. For example, my ex is | living with HIV, and it was a long road of treatments | before he was out of the woods. His health was pretty | poor when he was first diagnosed, and he was unresponsive | to the first line of antiretrovirals (his particular | strain was resistant) and it was upto me to manage his | health on a daily basis. I can't speak to your specific | personal situation that you speak of, but I can | appreciate that sharing them on a forum doesn't offer us | any extra cred with online strangers. | DoreenMichele wrote: | It's not uncharitable. It's highly qualified and based on | more than twelve years of experience posting here. | | I know essentially nothing about HIV. I know a little | something about using fasting to successfully treat an | incurable condition. | | I didn't share that because it is routinely ridiculous | levels of drama for me to comment on that and some people | here absolutely remember me and target me. | | I have some mental models for why I think fasting is | beneficial. I didn't share those because those amount to | "personal opinion" and I can't back them up. | | I am happy to hear medical reasons why fasting is | unlikely to work for HIV. That's mostly not the substance | of the feedback I got initially. | short_sells_poo wrote: | I'm really sorry that you have been the victim of such | forum drama. | | I also agree with you that people on this forum are on | balance likely to dismiss non-mainstream medical | approaches. If you are open minded about these and want | to discuss them without prejudice, you'll often be met | with responses that may be snarky or unfairly dismissive. | That's the unfair reality of holding non-mainstream | ideas. By default, they are off-piste, niche, etc... | | However, I didn't see anything like that in any of the | responses here. A very valid point was raised that you | support your proposition (ie that HIV might be helped by | fasting) with a Quora link. People who are not closed to | the idea will find that the link just contains some | anecdotal information which at best can confirm sub- | conscious pre-concieved biases, but not be a robust | argument. | | Worse, it plays into the hand of those who are outright | dismissive because you served them a perfect strawman to | attack. | | Ultimately, with any discussion forum you have to | consider the audience. People don't owe you anything and | particularly a forum like this where things are supposed | to be debated based on merit, the bar to debate claims is | relatively high. | | All these considered, it would've been better to simply | ignore the quora link, or at least strongly annotate it | saying it is just anecdotal and should not be taken as | supporting evidence. | onychomys wrote: | The reason that person's viral load went from 40k to 14k is | because that's how HIV infection works. It would have done so | whether he was fasting or eating 3 cheeseburgers a day. [0] | | [0] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Natural-Progression- | of-H... | DoreenMichele wrote: | Thank you. | [deleted] | mmastrac wrote: | HIV always seemed like the worst of the worst viruses to cure | permanently, but it feels like we're making some serious headway | here. | | Curing latent Chicken Pox, HPV, and the other common viruses | would be a fantastic improvement over our vaccination boosters | that are fantastic, but still probabilistic. | blagie wrote: | Personally, I'd like a vaccine for the common cold, much like | the annual flu shot. | | Even if it doesn't cure it, but reduces symptoms and duration, | I'd be happy. | unfocussed_mike wrote: | I have always entertained a "what if?" question here: | | What if... the common cold is like a folk tradition of | viruses that do us little harm and keep our immune system on | its toes, and that as such a "cure for the common cold" is | the wrong thing to want? | | To be clear I am no kind of biologist and I have no reason to | believe this is anything other than a silly idea, but I still | like it. | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | Why can't we just take vaccines to keep training our immune | system to be strong? | aliswe wrote: | Maybe that's what a cold is? | XorNot wrote: | https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold- | guide/common_cold_ca... | | The common cold is a low level respiratory infection | caused by a known suite of virus candidates. If we made | ourselves permanently immune to those without going | through the mucus and sore throat part there would be no | negative consequences. | toyg wrote: | Like those "good Samaritan" network viruses that patch | the vulnerability they exploited. Could be. | tnorthcutt wrote: | "what if?" can absolutely be a useful frame. | | The flip side: what if... the common cold causes small | amounts of permanent damage, or damage that doesn't show up | until much later in life? What if all viruses are this way, | and preventing infection/bad infection in the first place | is an enormous net benefit? | nabaraz wrote: | Bypass paywall: https://archive.is/wip/tbRwS | voz_ wrote: | I am somehow failing the captcha. If anyone has another bypass, | that would be appreciated. | 14 wrote: | https://archive.is/tbRwS | malermeister wrote: | https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome | | Never worry about paywalls again :-) | xyst wrote: | glad to see some advancement in the gene therapy space. I think | once people move past gene editing as "playing god", we will be | able to get rid of advanced genetic diseases entirely (ie, | muscular dystrophy) and edit our genes to be naturally resistant | to todays and future diseases. | | Also I hope gene therapy becomes democratized. It shouldn't be | limited to big Rx developing these solutions. | tediousdemise wrote: | Genetics ftw. I firmly believe that consumer genetic tests, | self-order lab tests, and overseas pharmacies will disrupt the | corrupt healthcare system because they empower patients to | treat themselves instead of resorting to conventional medicine | where Big Pharma, insurance companies, and overpaid doctors | gatekeep access to treatment. | | For 100 dollars, you can obtain a full copy of your genome from | a service like 23andMe and run it across a parsing tool such as | https://www.codegen.eu to find genetic predispositions to all | kinds of medical maladies. I found numerous bad SNPs in my | genetic data that I correlated to confirmed family cases. I | also discovered genes I have that reduce my response to certain | pharmaceuticals or cause harmful reactions. Why take a risky | shotgun approach when you can know in advance if something will | or will not work for you? | | It's literally like looking into a crystal ball of ailments | that are plaguing you now or in the future. Forget about | bouncing around from specialist to specialist for years and | years; read your genome to get the answers you seek today. It's | your source code. | 0x4d464d48 wrote: | "I think once people move past gene editing as "playing god", | we will be able to get rid of advanced genetic diseases | entirely (ie, muscular dystrophy) and edit our genes to be | naturally resistant to todays and future diseases." | | I think the "go fast and break things" mindset is scarier here | than the debates about whether or not we have the right to play | God. | somesortofthing wrote: | I used to think this way but honestly, given how poorly | nature does in terms of creating genetic material for new | people, I've come to believe that we have a pretty big margin | for error. The harm done by a gung-ho attitude toward gene | editing has to be compared to the harm done by allowing the | "natural" course of events to continue. | 0x4d464d48 wrote: | Look up elixir sulfanilamide and thalidomide. | | That's the sort of blood that writes regulations. | Experimental medicine has a long, clumsy and cruel | tradition. | solveit wrote: | And nature has a long, clumsy, cruel tradition of killing | literally everyone in various unpleasant ways, usually | before their time. There is a tradeoff and "optimize for | making sure we never ever ever repeat the thalidomide | fiasco again" is not the best strategy to take. | roywiggins wrote: | The Jesse Gelsinger case is probably the most relevant | here. | | https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/the-death- | of-je... | woeirua wrote: | I don't understand the argument against "playing god." Frankly, | almost everything we do is playing god in some way, shape, or | form. There is no way the planet could feed this many humans, | without humans actively shaping and altering almost every facet | of the ecosystem. Humans have already played god and will | continue to do so in ways that were unthinkable in years past. | [deleted] | jorpal wrote: | My wife is 33 weeks pregnant with our first. We plan to donate | our baby's cord blood to research. Cool to think it could help | researchers develop treatments like this in some small way! | skrbjc wrote: | It's very healthy for your baby to delay cord clamping as long | as possible | jorpal wrote: | Thanks for the tip! At our hospital the standard of care is | delayed cord clamping, although it sounds like they wait only | a few minutes, not 15+ minutes. It used to be done in ~<1 | minute, I guess, so a few minutes is called delayed now. Do | you have a good reference recommending to wait "long as | possible"? | throwntoday wrote: | Wait until all the blood has passed through and the cord is | white. Baby will likely be a little jaundiced but if you | clamp too early they will have low blood levels. Don't let | the hospital staff rush you (they will try). Best to let | nature run its course IMO. | | Good luck to you and your partner. | sersi wrote: | Write a birth plan, make the doctor or hospital staff | read it and confirm with them they read it. We had told | the doctor we wanted delayed cord clamping (not the habit | in hk), he acknowledged it despite warning us about | jaundice (he was old fashioned). Then during the actual | delivery, he completely forgot about it and both of us | were too sleep deprived to force the issue. | adolph wrote: | Here is more data on delay in cord clamping. | | https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/committee- | op... | | _because the placenta continues to perform gas exchange | after delivery, sick and preterm infants are likely to | benefit most from additional blood volume derived from | continued placental transfusion._ | pkukp9 wrote: | there isn't any evidence that delaying cord clamping for | longer than 60 seconds gives the baby more benefits than | delaying cord clamping for 30-60 seconds | JacobThreeThree wrote: | Did you consider freezing for future use? | The_rationalist wrote: | pkukp9 wrote: | I think freezing for future use is the best way to go. A few | reasons: 1) cord blood transplants from related donors have | higher survival rates than unrelated donors | https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199708073370602 2) | this woman was lucky that she was able to find a partial | match, but many don't. The combination of using a related | blood donor + an unrelated cord blood donor was a lucky | strike. I think for many very mixed race folks or especially | people of color (specifically Black communities), they may | not be so lucky 3) the cost of finding a donor can be | extremely steep. Some may be covered by insurance, but not | all of it will be. My guess is this woman who was cured from | HIV is relatively affluent to some degree. Banking cord blood | is considered to be for affluent folks, but the difference in | cost of banking vs. finding a donor later on is massive | smnrchrds wrote: | The umbilical cord blood storage industry is under-regulated | and untrustworthy, much like another freezing-related | industry, cryonics. Both are full of examples of amateurs, | bad actors, and mundane issues like bankruptcy resulting in | things that were promised to be kept frozen for decades or | centuries ending up in waste disposal after 5 years. Like | this example from Canada: | | https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/cord-blood-bank-of- | ca... | | Also, from the same article, does anyone has more information | on this: | | > _there 's a very low probability that someone's own stem | cells can be used to treat them, according to Health Canada._ | andy_ppp wrote: | There was a YC startup on here attempting to do this... | here we go: https://anjahealth.com | jorpal wrote: | I know some people keep the cord blood in a private bank. In | my opinion it only makes sense if you have family history of | or current relative with a disease that could be treated with | it. | | Since the hospital we are using (Stanford LPCH) has a | research program that will come collect it with no extra | steps on our side, it seemed like a good choice. | inglor_cz wrote: | Cord blood is a good source of "your own" stem cells. We do | not know what is going to be possible with such cells 20 or | 30 years from now; possibly unimaginable things. I would | save them if I had a child. Just in case. | jorpal wrote: | I get that it is very tempting. We all want to do | anything that could help our kids. However, there are | also an endless number of things people are selling to | new parents that prey on that reflex. I truly don't know | the right thing to do here, but the position I mentioned | earlier basically follows the recommendations from the | American Academy of Pediatrics: https://publications.aap. | org/pediatrics/article/140/5/e20172... | | This was from 2017 and is basically the same as a | reference I found from 2007. Has there been any actual | changes in the state of the art since it was published? | musha68k wrote: | Do you happen to know what's the maximum storage time? I | remember reading that it was about 10 years only? | yread wrote: | we did it. It depends on the freezer. at -80C they say | it's for a lifetime with a caveat that the technology is | only 23 years old so none can prove it's for a lifetime, | yet | londons_explore wrote: | If few other people save it, then nobody will develop | treatments using it, since a treatment is only developed | if it makes financial sense, and if <1% of potential | patients for a treatment have cord blood banked, then a | treatment that requires their personal cord blood will | never be developed. | noah_buddy wrote: | There are many companies doing this now and many | (affluent) parents are saving it. I think your analysis | misses the mark, even if there's a niche market, if it's | comprised of people willing to spend lots of money, it | can make sense as a business. | omgwtfbyobbq wrote: | There are state led efforts to bank cord blood as well | b/c of it's usefulness in some medical treatments and | research. | | https://sd25.senate.ca.gov/news/2017-06-26/california- | umbili... | | Unfortunately, public donations are only an option in | some locations. | | https://health.ucdavis.edu/cord-blood/locations | throwawaynay wrote: | apparently the founder of Anja Health said that she | launched it after her sibling almost drowned and needed it, | so maybe it make sense even without a predisposition? | | If I had a kid and enough disposable income I'd do it | without even thinking about it to be honest | pkukp9 wrote: | hello! founder of Anja Health here :) | | Yes, it makes sense without a predisposition. Things like | HIV with the woman cited in the article, cerebral palsy | due to a near drowning accident, etc. could all be use | cases. Our own team has a sales exec who used stem cells | for a knee injury he got in track & field in high school. | Another has a grandfather who used it for dementia. | | BTW, a lot of our clients self identify as having <75k in | income. Our pricing is 35-85/mo. for 8 years to cover 20 | years of storage. :D so hopefully you don't need to | allocate too much disposable income. It's still an | investment for sure, but many think it's worth it. Myself | included obviously haha | speg wrote: | Make sure they don't forget! In the chaos after birth, | sometimes these things slip through. I'm not sure what | happened when our first was born, but I do remember the | folks who came by a bit later to pick up the cord being | annoyed that the delivery team didn't save it. | pkukp9 wrote: | In a perfect world, I think everyone has access to their own | stem cells as opposed to sifting thru donor pool. | | Donating is definitely awesome, but there's a lot of research | surrounding how cord blood transplantation from related donors | (or yourself) increases your chance of survival from a stem | cell transplant vs. using an unrelated donor. | https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199708073370602 - | there's a chance of rejection. This woman found a partial | match, but she was lucky. I assume she's only 2 races or a | common mix i.e. half white, half something else | | Finding a match later on can also be much more expensive than | keeping your own! | vmception wrote: | Are there any negatives of this mutated CCR5 gene? | | This article makes it seem like HIV can be cured or at least | decimated in 100 days. | | I'm all for this STD whack-a-mole, just go down the list and | revert to consequence freedom | mmastrac wrote: | Will we ever get back to consequence freedom? "That" is a | particularly successful reproduction strategy for viruses and | bacteria to spread around. It feels like we'd just be waiting | for the next epidemic. | vmception wrote: | > Will we ever get back to consequence freedom? | | honestly I should rephrase because I don't think we've ever | had it, maybe in some isolated societies pre-colonialism, but | now we've never been closer even though sex-education is | currently based on so much fear. | mmastrac wrote: | I'm not sure it's fear, but rather caution and awareness of | consequences. Things can spiral out of control fairly | quickly if caution falls out of fashion. Two major | precautions prevent the vast, vast majority of disease and | pregnancy in virtually all situations. | vmception wrote: | Routine testing fixes most of issues too, many people | just have a stigma of testing at all, let alone as often | as they should. At this point, some forms of sex workers | that have more partners are cleaner than the general | population, just because they test often and fix things | early. Which is worth saying because it is | counterintuitive to what many people think will happen, | linking promiscuity to negative health outcome (because | they themselves don't test and just accumulate | probabilities of infections). the line isn't preventing | all exposure to disease, its fixing them when exposure | occurs. | | and yes, combining both strategies of protection | alongside testing + early fixing reduces the negative | consequence even more even when not preventing absolute | exposure to disease. | inglor_cz wrote: | This is what I found on Wikipedia: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCR5#Potential_costs | | There may be downsides for carriers of the mutation when | fighting infections by other viruses. But nothing completely | obvious (unlike, say, in sickle cell anemia). | taran_narat wrote: | The CCR5 probably codes for a chemokine, these are a group of | proteins which help white blood cells home on to specific | locations, I would guess you may get some sort of immune | deficiency if a chemokine protein was mutated enough | neonate wrote: | https://archive.is/tbRwS | Dowwie wrote: | Woman appears cured of HIV following HIV-resistant stem cell | treatment | dang wrote: | Recent and related: | | _Launch HN: Anja Health (YC W22) - Freezing stem cells at birth | for future health_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30305959 - Feb 2022 (147 | comments) | | (I wouldn't normally link to a Launch HN like that but this topic | is so unusual and specific that I figure it counts as | interesting.) | mmastrac wrote: | Totally tangential, but this was a shocking sentence from that | post... | | > plancentas are so valuable that physicians - especially in | Europe - sometimes prefer to take them for themselves to sell | to cosmetics research for ~$50k | | I wonder if there's a hybrid approach where you could share the | placenta/umbilical cord w/other companies and get free storage. | Alex3917 wrote: | You can donate cord blood for free to a public bank. | Obviously you're not guaranteed that it won't be used by | someone else before a sibling potentially needs it, but the | chances of it being useful to your own family are almost zero | anyway -- not exactly zero, but if you were making a list of | the ways to best increase your life expectancy given $5k to | spend, I doubt it would even make the top 1,000 options in | terms of expected ROI. | pkukp9 wrote: | hello - founder of Anja Health here :) | | I would actually argue that the chances of using it are | actually much higher & it would make the top 1000 options | in terms of expected ROI. Using type 1 diabetes as an | example: | | By age 18, approximately 1/300 people in the US develop | type 1 diabetes | | https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/240160#1 -> | here's an article demonstrating how cord blood has | successfully reversed type 1 diabetes | | and that's just for diabetes. Consider the chances and | corresponding research around cerebral palsy, hair loss, | heart failure, liver disease, cancers, and more that stem | cells - and specifically cord blood stem cells - have been | successfully used for. | acchow wrote: | What would be some things you might expect to see in the | top 50? | Alex3917 wrote: | Things generally related to diet, exercise, health, and | education. | op00to wrote: | - Spend good money on therapy - At home exercise | equipment - Dental care | | Just a few things off the top of my head. | skrbjc wrote: | That should be illegal | jacquesm wrote: | It is. | pkukp9 wrote: | A doula told me that she saw this happen in the US once too. | It's not legal, but I think there are legal loopholes around | it. Another OBGYN told me it's more common in Europe | jacquesm wrote: | That claim is bullshit, see my comment in that thread. | hangonhn wrote: | Interestingly enough, the HIV virus has been repurposed to cure | Leukemia (vs. Leukemia treatment used to fight HIV): | | https://www.focusforwardfilms.com/films/72/fire-with-fire | | IIRC the first patient of this treatment has recently marked 10 | years in remissions. | m463 wrote: | I liked the joe rogan episode with Mel Gibson. | | #1066 - Mel Gibson & Dr. Neil Riordan | | Mel Gibson took his aging father to an america doctor in panama | who harvests umbilical stem cells and it pretty much gave him a | new lease on life. They also help with hard to heal injuries | onychomys wrote: | Ever wonder why a miracle doctor from America has to work in | Panama? Yeah, it's because he spends a lot of time doing things | that don't have much (any) evidence to back them up. | | https://www.skepdoc.info/beware-stem-cell-clinics-that-offer... | mateus1 wrote: | Please don't take your scientific news from Joe Rogan. | | Science Vs. podcast has just released a great episode on the | kinds of misinformation spread there... | | https://gimletmedia.com/shows/science-vs/49hngng | [deleted] | Decabytes wrote: | I feel like there have been so many advancements in the HIV space | that have been coming together these past few years. I'm so | excited by the progress that has been made and I hope one day we | can eradicate it completely. Kudos to everyone who has been | working towards this goal | cuteboy19 wrote: | Pretty soon the question would shift from 'how do we do this' | to 'how do we do this _cheaply_ ' | bduerst wrote: | The first HIV mRNA vaccine just started it's phase I trial on | humans, only two weeks ago: | | https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2022/IAVI-... | | I have a feeling mRNA tech will be regarded as one of those | medical discoveries on par with penicillin, but only time will | tell. | andy_ppp wrote: | We haven't even started to see the potential for using the | body to manufacture the drugs needed to fix all kinds of | ailments. It's going to be a very interesting time that COVID | has brought forward dramatically I'm guessing. | nomel wrote: | > to manufacture the drugs needed | | This assumes that the drugs are proteins, correct? | f6v wrote: | I wonder if a bone marrow transplant from resistant donor is | going to be an option one day. | BizarroLand wrote: | It's worked in the past at least twice, but then instead of | well-controlled HIV you have to deal with Graft vs Host disease | which is much more problematic. | | https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/03/05/7003618... | abcc8 wrote: | One of the big issues with this approach is that you have to | effectively kill the person's immune system with very high dose | chemo before introducing the resistant bone marrow cells. While | BM transplantation is routinely performed, there are instances | where the transplant is not successful (for reasons other than | HLA match, etc), with the failure of bone marrow engraftment | being typically fatal. Given this, and that the current anti- | retroviral drugs generally work pretty well (i.e. those taking | the medication enjoy a reduced risk of mortality), this | curative treatment might not be pursued. | peter303 wrote: | A quarter of recipients die the first year after a bone marrow | transplant. Survival taking AIDS drugs is much higher like 97%. | sebow wrote: | Unrelated but while we're on this topic, people should also | remember Alan Greene's gold talk [0] about cutting the umbilical- | cord and how (not doing) it can save so many kids quite literally | "for free".I don't want to sound insensitive here, and i somewhat | smell that stem-cell treatment(s) will somewhat be used for | "anti-aging" therapeutics for the well-off higher-class if | they're not already;But before that we should still keep in mind | that we can help kids or those people in need with serious | conditions.I see people act disgusted by it, eat it, or other | crazy sh1t, but it has an evolutionary role we cannot gloss over. | | [0] ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw53X98EvLQ ) | smm11 wrote: | I'm thinking of a certain political party that will strike this | down. | sudobash1 wrote: | I assume that you are referring to Republicans and medical | procedures related to abortion. If so, I don't think there is | anything with regards to this procedure which requires an | umbilical cord from an aborted fetus. Additionally, most pro- | life/anti-abortion groups seem to be highly supportive of | umbilical cord treatments. Searching online turned up many | sites like this: https://www.prolifewi.org/cord-blood ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-02-15 23:00 UTC)