Bone Marrow Transplant may Cure AIDS for Certain Patients

This new treatment uses umbilical cord stem cells. While it does sound promising it is not for everyone diagnosed with AIDS the patients must also have one of a certain number of unannounced cancers, although the patient that was cured had leukemia. While the success story below is nothing but amazing it is important to mention that one-third of all patients who undergo the bone marrow transplant die. It is also very difficult to find a suitable match for the patients. Although, even one mans success story is enough to give all of mankind a glimmer of hope of what could come.

Doctor’s Discovery

Doctors in Berlin made an extraordinary announcement: “They declared an HIV patient who had undergone an HIV-resistant bone marrow transplant to be cured of his disease. Now, doctors in Texas are hoping to build on that success story by screening stored umbilical cord blood for HIV-resistant stem cells that could be transplanted into patients.”

Cord Blood Treatment

“The potential cord blood treatment would work in much the same way, except that instead of an adult donor, the stem cells would come from a frozen vial of cord blood. After screening more than 1,500 cord blood samples donated at three hospitals in Houston, Behringer and his team turned up 10 HIV-resistant samples. Two failed the quality control standards necessary for transplant, leaving 8 potential samples awaiting the right patient.”

Conclusion

The procedure is very risky there are many side effects and bone marrow transplants can be hard to find a match donor for and the procedure is painful. However, if given the option of living with cancer and AIDS or undergoing the bone marrow transplant researchers find that most patients would endure the procedure and its side effects.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41914609/ns/health-aids/wid/11915773