What's Happening At HI-V
The HI-V (Five) group was created to give individuals living with HIV/AIDS from the six-county AIDSNET region a voice in the planning and funding of HIV/AIDS care and prevention services. This group, through bi-monthly meetings and other activities, provides input to the AIDSNET Board of Directors about how to best fulfill the AIDSNET mission. The group is currently working on its June 2011 Annual Consumer Summit scheduled for June 3-5, 2011 in Northampton County.
If you are a person living with HIV/AIDS and are interested in participating in HI-V (Five) or interested in attending the Summit, please call Victoria McKinzey-Gonzalez at 610-882-1119 or Email her for more information. Please remember that you must reside in one of the six counties we serve to participate.
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The Future
Doctors who carried out a stem cell transplant on an HIV-infected man with
leukemia in 2007 say they now believe the man to have been cured of HIV infection as a result of the treatment, which introduced stem cells which happened to be resistant to HIV infection.
The man received bone marrow from a donor who had natural resistance to HIV infection; this was due to a genetic profile which led to the CCR5 co-receptor being absent from his cells. The most common variety of HIV uses CCR5 as its ‘docking station’, attaching to it in order to enter and infect CD4 cells, and people with this mutation are almost completely protected against infection.
The case was first reported at the 2008 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston, and Berlin doctors subsequently published a detailed case history in the New England Journal of Medicine in February 2009.
They have now published a follow-up report in the journal Blood, arguing that based on the results of extensive tests, “It is reasonable to conclude that cure of HIV infection has been achieved in this patient.”
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