Re:For the First Time in History Man Cured of HIV
by pak on Wednesday December 15, 2010 @03:08AM
(#2007435)
Nitpick: Viruses don't consume food for energy, they feed off of the energy metabolism of their host cell. CCR5 is a receptor that HIV binds to while entering human cells. If it is mutated in a certain rare way, HIV has a hard time entering cells, and it needs to be inside the cell to replicate. By swapping out this guy's immune system with one that has mutant CCR5, they've prevented HIV from replicating in his body.
Re:For the First Time in History Man Cured of HIV
by arghnoname on Wednesday December 15, 2010 @09:08AM
(#2008111)
HIV is also active with glial cells. AIDS dementia complex is a direct result of HIV infection of these kinds of cells (most likely). It would be really interesting to see if there is still virus in the patient's brain, and if so, what effect it will have on him going forward.
Basically they destroyed the HIV's food source, and likely (at least temporarily) changed the man's new immune cells to the CCR5 variant in them that reduced the effectiveness of the HIV's ability to replicate.
Again, from my lay understanding, HIV changes its cell protein markers to avoid being attacked by immune cells. Often there are multiple HIV variants with different protein markers at one time active in a person.
IMO all but the 'newest' variant likely died of attrition, leaving one or two HIV protein marker variants that the new highly bolstered CCR5 mutant immune cells managed to latch onto and defeat.
I could be way wrong, but from my understanding this is the closest 'model' I can think of for how this would work. However, it's past my usual end-of-day so it may just be gibberish of an overtired mind.