Holy S#$t!!!

You are not going to believe this news story: A man living with HIV has been 'cured' by the use of stem cell research.

An HIV-positive man who received a stem cell transplant for leukemia has been cured of HIV infection, doctors announced recently.

While the case was first reported at the 2008 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston, doctors have now published an updated report in the journal Blood, which affirms extensive testing.

"It is reasonable to conclude that cure of HIV infection has been achieved in this patient," the doctors wrote.

In 2007, Timothy Ray Brown suffered a relapse of leukemia that required a stem cell tranplant. Brown, also known as "Berlin patient," was given stem cells from a donor that lacked the CCR5 receptor, "a condition that is present in less than 1 percent of Caucasians in northern and western Europe," according to London-based AidsMap.

"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," they explained. "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."

Wow...that is honest to God, an amazing story. I hope the field of science can do more research on this breakthrough, because if we see more tests that lead to positive results like the one I just read, this would be the biggest medical breakthrough since the vaccination of Polio back in the 50's.