A case of HIV cured and the growth of HIV among elders

Au Hai Le-Nguyen
06/28/2014

















There is no room for doubt that HIV/AIDS has become the fear and obsession of human
being since the illness first came to light in the early 1980s. For over twenty years, it has been
the subject of many debates and the cause of countless arguments. Although scientists all over
the world have tried their best to find a cure for this fatal disease, it seems to be hopeless. At this
point, there is no remedy, what we have now is only medicines to fight both HIV infection and
the infections and cancers that come with it. However, a hope of curing this disease has been
raised in 2007 by a little-known German doctor, Gero Huetter, who succeeds in his single case of
curing the disease. Until then, the best scientists had hoped for was to control HIV infection, not
to eliminate HIV from body entirely.
Huetters patient was a 41 years old man, who had had both AIDS and leukemia. The
man received a bone-marrow transplant and then no longer showed any sign of AIDS virus.
Huetter later reported his case in a conference and he was asked to present it on a poster instead
of in a talk. However, when he showed and explained the poster to other scientists, no one truly
cared about it. Huetters poster had been forgotten until Jeffrey Laurence, a researcher at Weill
Cornell Medical college, explored it. Laurence is always looking for a cure of HIV since he first
knew about it; therefore, he really wanted to believe in Huetters claim. He wanted to give
himself as well as other people a hope, even it was vague. In September 2008, Laurence created
a group of 12 people, including Huetter, Stephen Deeks - Harvard University immunologist Judy
Lieberman, and David Margolis - a leading AIDS researcher at the University of North Carolina,
to research and verify Huetters case. The result was a tremendous shift as they found out that the
patient was cured of AIDS. Huetters case has inspired and strengthen many HIV/AIDS patient
as well as scientists and doctors around the world.
Ray Brown, Huetters patient, who was cured of AIDS, discovered his first sickness,
HIV, in 1995. Since that time, he started using antiretroviral medication to prevent AIDS by
keeping HIV levels in check. Ten years later, he found out his second disease, leukemia, and it
worsened so fast that he needed to have bone-marrow transplant, which replaces his old
immune system with a new one as bone marrow is the source of all of the bodys blood and
immune cells. Huetter used to read a report saying that a genetic mutation can prevent the
infiltration of HIV virus to cells. CCR5 delta32, which is a mutant form of CCR5, is a receptor
that HIV needs to gain entry into one of its well-known targets: CD4 +T cells. The mutation
just occurred when a patient receives a matching bone-marrow. This situation only happened in
one percent of people. Luckily, Brown was in that percentage. Brown had to underwent
chemotherapy to wipe out his immune system before he had his bone-marrow transplant on
February 6, 2007. After the surgery, Huetter planned to let Brown continue using antiretroviral
drugs but Browns partner, a massage therapist, thought that the stem cells from the transplant
wouldnt reproduce properly if fooded with the chemicals. Therefore, Brown completely
stopped using medicine. A few months later, Brown showed no sign of HIV even when he lived
without themedication.
After Huetters case, there are a few situations using different methods that succeed in
curing HIV. Of these case, only Brown has had a follow - up long and thorough enough
including brain, gut, colon, and lymph-node biopsies evaluated by multiple labsto merit the
unequivocal label of cure. However, bone-marrow transplant is dangerous for HIV patient as
one third of transplant recipients do not survive and even one succeeds in the transplant, it does
not mean that they are cured of HIV. This fact is proved in July 2012, when two men in Boston
seemed to be free of HIV virus after their bone-marrow transplants like Browns but they still
used antiretroviral therapy after their procedures, when they stopped using it, their infections
appear again. No one can explain what happen to these men. However, we cannot deny that
Huetters case lights up a hope of entirely eliminating HIV virus in humans body.
Perhaps, people have concentrated so much on finding a way to cure HIV that they forget
about another alerting issue of this disease in recent years, which is the increasing number of
HIV positive cases among elders around the world. HIV is believed to be youngsters disease
since the day it was discovered, older people were only known as caregivers, who gave both
financial and mental supports to patients; therefore, people usually ignore testing and checking
HIV infection on elderly people. However, in 2006, UNAIDS - the Joint United Nations
Programme on HIV/AIDS - reported that the number of HIV positive cases among elders has
been growing steadily. Studies showed that HIV/AIDS revealed about 2.8 million adults aged
50 years and older were living with HIV globally in 2005 and this number will increase to 5.6
million in 2050. These studies also claimed that the number of HIV infection cases among elders
accounted for approximately 10 percent of Americas.
Based on the article Prevention of HIV Among Older Adults: A Literature Review and
Recommendations for Future Research by Tracy Davis and Faika Zanjani, older people having
HIV/AIDS derive from different groups: individuals that have underwent highly active
antiretroviral therapy for a long time, individuals infected with HIV when they are about 50 or
above 50 years old, individuals who do not know that they are infected and do not get involved
in risky behaviors and individuals who are not aware that they are infected and get involved in
risky behaviors.
The number of HIV/AIDS cases among older people is growing every year because
elders do not have much knowledge about HIV/ AIDS. It is true that young people do not usually
mention about HIV prevention to middle aged or older people and not every elders know the
important role of using condoms, testing HIV and not sharing needles. In addition, seniors also
rarely talk to doctors about their sex lives or drug use. Besides those reasons, there are so many
other factors that lead to HIV infection among elderly people. According to Hosegood and
Timaeus, the authors of the article The impact of adult mortality on the living arrangements of
older people in rural South Africa. Ageing and society, elderly people are influenced by HIV/
AIDS in many ways. Apart from familiar reasons such as the financial needs, co-residence with
HIV patients and handling with troubles in life, there is another fact that is not widely known,
which is elders sexual behavior. In 2001, the National Advisory Council on Ageing conducted a
survey among people over 60 years old about their sexual activities. The result showed that 92
percent of respondents reckoned that sex played an important role in their life and the answers
were similar for both men and women. This research emphasized a fact that contrary to our
common belief, sexual activities are not only the main cause of HIV/AIDS infection in young
people but it also plays an enormous part to the infection of elders.
Instead of discriminating HIV/AIDS patients, people should try to sympathy and take
care of them. Spending time and love for these miserable people means giving them a motivation
to overcome their fatal disease and move on in their lives. In fact, we cannot get HIV through
casual contact such as shaking hands, hugging or sharing a drink with a person that has
HIV/AIDS and we also cannot get HIV from being coughed or sneezed on by a person with
HIV/AIDS; therefore, there is no reason for us to stay away HIV/AIDS patients. Lets be nice to
HIV/AIDS patients so that they have more chance and reason to survive and we can also
contribute a little effort on building a better society.
Literature Cited
Mandavilli, Apoorva. 2014. The aids cure. Popular science. Pg 56-61.
Davis, Tracy and Zanjani, Faika. 2012. Prevention of HIV Among Older Adults: A Literature
Review and Recommendations for Future Research. Vol. 24, Issue 8. p1399-1420.
Hosegood, Victoria and Timus, Ian M. 2005. The impact of adult mortality on the living
arrangements of older people in rural South Africa. Ageing and society. Vol. 25, Issue 3. p431-
444.