Man cured of HIV by adult stem cell transplant interviewed

Timothy Ray Brown was recently interviewed by the San Francisco CBS affiliate about being cured of AIDS after receiving a stem cell transplant from a donor who was immune from HIV.

“I quit taking my HIV medication the day that I got the transplant and haven’t had to take any since,” said Brown, who has been dubbed “The Berlin Patient” by the medical community......

Both doctors stressed that Brown’s radical procedure may not be applicable to many other people with HIV, because of the difficulty in doing stem cell transplants, and finding the right donor.

“You don’t want to go out and get a bone marrow transplant because transplants themselves carry a real risk of mortality,” Volberding said.

He explained that scientists also still have many unanswered questions involving the success of Brown’s treatment.

“One element of his treatment, and we don’t know which, allowed apparently the virus to be purged from his body,” he observed. “So it’s going to be an interesting, I think productive area to study.”