Researchers Block Replication of AIDS Virus

A multidisciplinary team of scientists from Spanish universities and research centres, among which is the University of Valencia, has managed to design small synthetic molecules capable of joining to the genetic material of the AIDS virus and blocking its replication.

This achievement has been obtained for the first time in the world by a group of researcher led by José Gallego from Universidad Católica de Valencia "San Vicente Mártir." The University of Valencia, the Príncipe Felipe Research Centre, and the Instituto de Salud Carlos III have participated.

The newly designed synthetic molecules inhibit the output of genetic material of the virus from the infected cell nucleus to the cytoplasm, thus the virus replication is blocked and avoids the infection of other cells. The genetic material of the AIDS virus, or HIV-1, is formed by ribonucleic acid (RNA), and encodes several proteins that allow it to penetrate the human cells and reproduce within them. The new virus inhibitors, called terphenyls, developed by this group of scientists, were designed by computer to reproduce the interactions of one of the proteins encoded by the virus, the viral protein Rev.

In this way, the terphenyls join Rev's receptor in the viral RNA, preventing the interaction between the protein and its RNA receptor. This interaction is necessary for the virus genetic material to leave the infected cell nucleus and, thus, it is essential for the survival of HIV-1. The fact that the terphenyls block the virus genetic material output of the cell prevents the infection of other cells.

This discovery is the result of a close collaboration between three research groups throughout several years. Thus, the scientists of the Universitat Católica de Valencia were in charge of the computational design and verified experimentally that the terphenyls were capable of joining the Rev receptor in the viral RNA and inhibit the interaction between this RNA and the protein.
For its part, the molecules were synthesised in professor Santos Fustero's organic Chemistry laboratory in the Príncipe Felipe Research Centre and the University of Valencia. Also, through experiments with cells infected by the virus, the group of José Alcamí in the Instituto de Salud Carlos III demonstrated that the inhibitors block the replication of the HIV-1 and inhibit the function of the Rev protein, confirming this way the validity of the models generated by computer.

Traditionally, pharmaceutical companies have focused on the development of medicines that act on target proteins, as the approach to the receptors made out of RNA is considerably complex.

Although several natural antibiotics act at the bacterial ribosomal RNA level, up to now designing by computer a new synthetic chemical entity capable of joining RNA target and have a relevant pharmacological effect was not possible. The terphenyl structures identified in this research could open new ways to approach other therapeutic targets formed by nucleic acids.
On the other hand, the infection by HIV affected 34 million people worldwide in 2010, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). The emergence of resistance to the current antiretroviral therapies and the lack of an effective vaccine highlight the necessity of identifying the new medicines that act on other virus targets. Rev protein constitutes one of this alternative targets, but so far they it has not been possible to develop antiviral agents based in their inhibition.

The results of this research have been the objectives of a patent application, and the three laboratories involved in the research keep their collaboration with the objective of improving the pharmacological properties of new Rev inhibitors.

Untreated HIV Carriers Transmit Resistant Viruses

Human-Immunodeficiency Viruses that resist AIDS medicines are primarily transmitted by people who are not actually undergoing treatment. In order to prevent a spread of the resistant viruses increased efforts in prevention and early diagnosis of new infections are needed, as concluded by the Swiss HIV Cohort Study that is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

Around one in every ten newly infected HIV carriers in Switzerland has viruses that are resistant to at least one of the three classes of drugs used to treat AIDS. Contrary to previously held assumptions, resistant viruses are primarily transmitted by people who are not yet receiving treatment, according to the reports in "Clinical Infectious Diseases" from the researchers headed by Roger Kouyos and Huldrych Günthard at Zurich University Hospital.

Reconstruction of transmission chains - In their molecular epidemiological analysis of 1674 male carriers of HIV who had sex with other men, the researchers demonstrated resistant viruses in 140 patients. The research group reconstructed the transmission chains of these viruses on the basis of the patients' estimated infection dates and the degree of genetic relatedness of their blood-borne viruses. Most of the transmission chains commence in HIV carriers who were not yet undergoing treatment at the time at which the resistant viruses were transmitted.

"We were astonished to note that the resistant viruses are primarily brought into circulation by untreated people," said Günthard. "Previously we had assumed that the resistant viruses came from patients for whom treatment had failed as resistances were produced while treatment was ongoing."

Early diagnosis is vital - The principal role of untreated HIV carriers in the transmission of resistant viruses means that combating these resistant strains is not solely reliant on optimised treatment, but also on preventing transmission by people who are not undergoing treatment. Prevention and early detection of newly infected persons are particularly vital in this respect. "In contrast to other tests, such as that for hepatitis, the HIV test requires that permission is obtained from the patient," explained Günthard. Since many doctors are reluctant to discuss their patients' sexuality with them openly, many infections are not discovered until much later than they could and should have been. While progress in medicine has robbed AIDS of its deadly effect, Günthard went on to stress, "there is still a great deal to be done."

The Swiss HIV Cohort Study - The aim of the study, which started in 1988, is to better understand HIV infection and AIDS, and improve the treatment of patients. All of Switzerland's specialist HIV clinics (Basel, Berne, Geneva, Lausanne, Lugano, St. Gallen and Zurich) collect data on treatment and the progress of the disease. Currently over 8,800 people are taking part in the Swiss HIV Cohort Study, of whom almost one third are women.

Aloe vera helps reverse cancer and AIDS

One of the best kept secrets in the nutritional field is aloe vera. Commonly recognized for soothing ulcers, hemorrhoids, sunburns, wounds and other skin ailments, many don't know the power pure raw aloe vera juice has for improving and even reversing serious diseases that baffle mainstream medicine.

That's because those claims are suppressed.

If a supplement or nutritional product promotes any kind of cure, the FDA and other agencies send their bootjack militia to raid them. A frightening example occurred in Tampa, Florida a couple of decades ago as research physician Ivan Danhoff MD was attempting to crash the medical mafia's cancer party. That's when his nutritional clinic was using aloe extracts and curing terminal cancer patients from hospice. Health agency thugs raided, pulling IVs out of patients whose condition had improved dramatically. Many died months later. The clinical trial was going by FDA guidelines to get the aloe extract approved

Improving on nature is probably unnecessary with aloe vera

The desire to modify or isolate ingredients from aloe vera to create an accepted medical model that is efficacious without side effects is commendable. But it appears Big Pharma and the cancer industry's good fellas want to protect their turf. Allowing an actual cure would even put the cancer cure fund raisers out of business. Most store shelf aloe vera juices don't do much beyond soothing the minor ailments mentioned earlier. Those juices are processed, heated, and diluted. That's not the case with all aloe vera products. The right aloe vera juice products are miracle healers

The most dramatic clinical proof of pure raw aloe vera juice comes from research done with AIDS patients. Almost all who were put on a regimen of daily aloe vera juice got better with white T cell counts skyrocketing. It's obvious that aloe vera is a potent immune booster, which implies it can be applied to other diseases.

One of the AIDS patients in this trial was diagnosed with advanced liver cancer and told he had less than two months to live. His liver was so tumor riddled it was four times its normal size. He continued with the juice, improved gradually, and within a year all his tumors were gone.

A doctor involved with this trial, pathologist H. Reginald McDaniel MD, was at first skeptical. But now he has seriously ill patients using aloe successfully. What turned him around was his own illness, a viral pneumonia for which conventional medicine had no answer. He was given a couple of cases of aloe juice, and his cure turned him into an aloe advocate.

Two short videos covering the aloe AIDS/cancer story are linked at the end of this paragraph. The last part of video 2 is censored, evidently to exclude information for ordering that particular juice. Promoting non-pharmaceutical AIDS and cancer cures is a no-no with the FDA. That data was probably pulled to protect them from FDA harassment

Aloe's healing power known for ages

The juice's power has been known by indigenous groups for ages. Franciscan Friar Romano Zago discovered how to make the juice from Brazilian Indians, used it with local villagers, and published his findings in the 1980s. He used their recipe based on the indigenous aloe arborescense plant . Father Zago's juice and others are from whole leaves. It's possible to get aloe juices without leaf skins (filleted) or reduced aloin content to minimize potential diarrhea side effects.

Immune Protein Found to Block HIV Spread in Some

One percent of people infected with HIV have a second line of defense deep in their immune system, which serves as a back-up for the body's defenses that get wiped out by the virus. These people, known as "controllers," are able to maintain long-term control of HIV without a daily regimen of antiviral medication because of a defensive immune protein, known as A3, which blocks the virus from spreading throughout their body.

Scientists from Northwestern University suggested their findings could help shorten the drug treatment required for others who have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. "Preserving and even increasing this defense in cells may make more HIV-infected persons into controllers and prevent HIV from rebounding to high and damaging levels when anti-HIV medications are stopped," the study's senior author, Dr. Richard D'Aquila, director of Northwestern's HIV Translational Research Center, said.

In conducting the study, the researchers analyzed the cells of controllers in a lab. They found that these rare individuals have a greater supply of the A3 protein in specific white blood cells called resting memory T cells. Any new HIV made from those cells is rendered harmless by A3 and is unable to infect other cells. Unlike other cells in the immune system that are unable to recognize HIV once it mutates, A3 is part of the so-called intrinsic immune system that isn't fooled by the virus. "The intrinsic immune system recognizes the basic guts of the virus -- the nucleic acids -- that HIV can't change and then damages those nucleic acids," D'Aquila explained.

The researchers suggested that earlier treatment could help others eventually maintain control of their HIV without medication by protecting their reserves of A3.

"Perhaps starting anti-HIV drugs very soon after HIV is caught, rather than the current practice of waiting until later to start, would work like the controllers' first line of defense," D'Aquila said. "If we preserve A3, it could minimize HIV's spread through the body as this protein seems to do in controllers."

The researchers noted there are several cases of early HIV treatment resulting in long-term control of the virus. For example, in January 2013, a baby born to an HIV-positive woman became infected with the virus but was given anti-HIV drug treatment within 36 hours of birth. That baby is now off antiviral medication and apparently cured of HIV, D'Aquila said.

If HIV remains unchecked for several months, however, the researchers suggested reserves of A3 are simply wiped out. They are currently working to develop a drug that would boost the A3 protein. "Early-as-possible detection -- much easier with our new technology -- and early drug treatment will be the future of HIV therapy," D'Aquila concluded. He added that the new U.S. health law, the Affordable Care Act, now requires insurance companies to pay for routine HIV testing.

Child 'Cured' of HIV Remains Free of Virus

A 3-year-old Mississippi girl apparently cured of HIV infection by aggressive treatment right after her birth remains free of the virus, her doctors report.

Early treatment with a combination of potent antiretroviral drugs appears to have kept the virus from successfully establishing a reservoir in the child's system, said immunologist Dr. Katherine Luzuriaga, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, who is part of the research team tracking the case.

Doctors are hesitant to declare the child fully cured, but they said that no actively replicating HIV has been found in her system by even the most sensitive tests available. The girl stopped taking HIV medication when she was 18 months old.

A couple of tests have found very low-level indications of HIV in the girl's blood, but doctors cannot tell if they are false positives or simply remnants of the eradicated virus.

"If they are remnants, the question is whether they are capable of reigniting," Luzuriaga said. "For that reason, we are calling this a remission because we want to follow the baby over a longer period of time to see if the child continues to control the virus without rebound."

The girl's pediatrician, Dr. Hannah Gay, of the University of Mississippi Medical Center, launched HIV treatment just 30 hours following her birth. Doctors normally put HIV-positive mothers on two antiretroviral medications prior to birth as a way of preventing transmission of the virus to their unborn children, Luzuriaga said. After delivery, doctors test the newborns for HIV and continue treatment if the virus appears.

But in this girl's case, no one knew the mother was HIV-positive before delivery and the girl was born infected. This led Gay to put the newborn on antiretroviral treatment immediately, and that timing appears to have made a difference. Gay also chose to employ a combination of three antiretroviral drugs, all at doses commonly used to treat HIV-infected infants, and kept the girl on the medications until she was 18 months old. This prevented the virus from mounting any drug resistance before it could be wiped clean from her body, Luzuriaga said.

Tests showed progressively diminishing HIV levels in the infant's blood, until it reached undetectable levels 29 days after birth. The child remained on antiretrovirals until 18 months of age, at which point doctors said they lost track of her and she stopped treatment. Doctors next saw her about 10 months after her treatment ceased. The child underwent repeated standard HIV tests, which detected no virus in her blood.

The two factors -- timing and medication -- appear to have prevented HIV from gaining a foothold in the girl's immune system. The virus was unable to create a reservoir in her body in which dormant HIV can hide and later reignite when drug therapy is suspended.

"What studies in other babies have shown us is if you treat very early, you're not only able to treat the viral replication but also able to limit the number of cells in which HIV integrates itself into the host genes," Luzuriaga said. "Basically, HIV makes copies of DNA and that DNA integrates itself into host genes. That's the barrier to cure. As long as you have those white blood cells floating around the body that have HIV stitched into the host DNA, the patient is not cured."

A key point is that the child exhibits none of the immune characteristics seen in "elite controllers," the tiny percentage of HIV-infected people whose immune systems are so active that they can keep the virus in check without treatment, the researchers said. The absence of these characteristics indicates that early therapy -- rather than natural immune mechanisms -- led to the child's remission.

Based on this girl's case, a federally funded study set to begin in early 2014 will test the early treatment method to determine whether the approach could be used in all HIV-infected newborns.

This method could cure newborns infected with HIV but is unlikely to help adults, given that they rarely learn of their infection until months or years after transmission, said Dr. Rowena Johnston, vice president of research at the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR).

"If there is something key to treating HIV within the first couple of days of transmission, it's going to be incredibly difficult to treat adults in this manner," Johnston said. "But this case really opens up the possibility that there may be different HIV cures for different populations, depending on what the circumstances are."

Dr. Michael Horberg, director of HIV/AIDS treatment and research for Kaiser Permanente, agreed that the infant's case is very encouraging, but said it's not an indication of a potential cure for all people with HIV.

"This is a very unique situation, but it does show that very early treatment is very successful," Horberg said. "We can envision potential future pathways with correct medication and vigilance where there might be a percentage of patients who could be successfully treated."

Only one other instance of an HIV cure has been documented, in the so-called "Berlin patient." An American man living in Germany received a bone marrow transplant for leukemia, with cells from a donor who had a rare genetic mutation that increases immunity against HIV. This patient has remained HIV-free after discontinuing drug therapy.

Breast milk found to kill HIV

Is it possible that breast milk contains the magic potion which kills the virus that causes AIDS? According to new research, that's a distinct possibility.

A recent study, which was conducted by researchers from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, found that mice did not contract HIV after ingesting virus-tainted breast milk.

Moreover, the researchers found, the breast milk actually killed the virus.

The mice used in the study had previously been injected with human cells to reconstitute their bodies, the CBS affiliate in Charlotte reported. Other reports said the mice were injected with human bone marrow, liver and thymus tissues so they would have fully functional human immune systems and be nearly as susceptible to the HIV virus.

It's the first study to examine the effect of breast milk on HIV in a mammalian model. Prior research has only been done in test tubes.

"The results of these experiments highlight the potent HIV inhibitory activity of normal human breast milk and demonstrate that the in vitro HIV inhibitory activity of human breast milk is also capable of efficiently preventing oral transmission of cell-free HIV," the study said.

Breast milk serves a 'protective role'

Researchers who conducted the study hope it demonstrates that it's safe for an HIV-positive woman who is taking anti-retrovirals to breastfeed her children, even though for years they have been told not to do so if infected.

"Our results highlight the protective role of human breast milk against HIV transmission and suggest that components in both the skim milk and lipid fractions may contribute to its HIV inhibitory activity," the study said.

Dr. Viktor Garcia, the study's senior author, said in a press release that this study will help "close this important door to the spread of AIDS."

"No child should ever be infected with HIV because it is breastfed. Breastfeeding provides critical nutrition and protection from other infections, especially where clean water for infant formula is scarce," he said in a press release to the university. "Understanding how HIV is transmitted to infants and children despite the protective effects of milk will help us close this important door to the spread of AIDS."

Study results provide the path ahead

Angela Wahl, a post-doctoral researcher at UNC School of Medicine and lead author of the paper, said, "These results are highly significant because they show that breast milk can completely block oral transmission of both forms of HIV that are found in the breast milk of HIV-infected mothers: virus particles and virus-infected cells.

Wahl added: "This refutes the 'Trojan horse' hypothesis which says that HIV in cells is more stubborn against the body's own innate defenses than HIV in virus particles."

Despite the encouraging study, it's not a certainty that mothers with HIV who breastfeed their children won't pass the virus along. But Wahl said the research is, essentially, a good starting point for further study because it lays the foundation for the next step - figuring out what component of breast milk actually provides the protection. To do that, researchers will now have to study breast milk from mothers who did pass along the virus and the milk of mothers who did not, to find the difference.

"What we have shown is that breast milk is indeed a protective agent, so it should not be denied even to children of HIV-infected women," "What we know is that infants who acquire HIV during breastfeeding weren't infected at the time of birth, and when you look at the virus that eventually infects the infant and the virus in mother's breast milk, it's the same. But it doesn't mean it couldn't be the result of contact with blood."

HIV Vaccines Elicit Immune Response in Infants

A new analysis of two HIV vaccine trials that involved pediatric patients shows that the investigational vaccines stimulated a critical immune response in infants born to HIV-infected mothers

The finding at the AIDS Vaccine 2013 meeting in Barcelona, Spain, examined samples from two previously completed pediatric HIV vaccine trials - called PACTG 230 and PACTG 326 - to determine whether they elicited a key immune response that has only recently been associated with reduced HIV infection.

Searching for evidence of an anti-V1V2 IgG antibody response - the newly identified mechanism for protection against HIV - the researchers found that both of the old pediatric vaccine candidates triggered this key immune defense. While babies born to HIV-infected mothers had maternally acquired anti-V1V2 IgG antibodies at birth, infants who were vaccinated had better and longer-lasting antibody responses than their counterparts who received a placebo vaccine.

"Effective infant HIV vaccination may be affected by the presence of maternal HIV-specific antibodies and the immaturity of the infant immune system," said the study's lead author, Genevieve Fouda, M.D., PhD, of Duke. "Our findings suggest that vaccination of infants born to HIV-infected mothers can elicit a robust anti-HIV envelope IgG immune response."

Fouda said the results of the study highlight the importance of including pediatric populations in HIV vaccine studies. "Mother-to-child transmission continues to be an important public health issue in resource limited areas," Fouda said. "Every year, approximately 300,000 infants are infected with HIV. Antiretroviral drugs have reduced the rate of mother to child transmission rate in the United States below 2 percent, but overall in low and middle income countries less than 60 percent of known HIV infected women receive drugs to prevent transmission to their infants. Immune-based interventions such as a vaccine are needed to eliminate pediatric HIV."

Anabolic steroids help people with HIV put on weight and muscle mass

People with HIV who are treated with anabolic steroids to prevent AIDS wasting may realize modest gains in weight and muscle mass.

The review covered 13 studies of adults age 24 to 42 with HIV, 294 of whom received anabolic steroids for at least six weeks and 238 of whom received placebo. The average weight increase in those taking anabolic steroids was nearly three pounds.

“The magnitude of weight gain observed may be considered clinically relevant,” said lead author Karen Johns, a medical assessment officer from the agency Health Canada. “One hopes there would be greater weight gain with the long-term use of anabolic steroids; however, this has not been proven to date in clinical trials.”

AIDS wasting, which leads to significant weight loss in people with HIV, causes severe loss of weight and muscle and can lead to muscle weakness, organ failure and shortened lifespan. Researchers have long sought to reverse this common, destructive effect of HIV with mixed success.

The wasting stems from loss of the body’s ability to grow muscle and from low levels of testosterone.

Anabolic steroids are synthetic substances similar to the male sex hormone testosterone that promote growth of skeletal muscle and the development of male sexual characteristics.

Although most recently in the news for their misuse by professional athletes, anabolic steroids have legitimate medical application for men with low testosterone and people with certain types of anemia. Two anabolic steroids available in the United States, nandrolone decanoate and stanozolol, have been used to help increase weight and muscle mass in small studies of people with wasting.

Conversely, anabolic steroid use has been associated with increased rates of HIV in those who share needles or use nonsterile needles when they inject steroids.

In the review studies, anabolic steroids were administered to patients either orally or by injection. The main side effects were mild and included abnormal liver function tests; acne; mild increase in body hair; breast tenderness; increased libido, aggressiveness and irritability; and mood swings — all common side effect of anabolic steroid use.

“The risks and side effects of taking anabolic steroids long-term are certainly of concern,” Johns said. “We were unable to assess these risks in our review due to the short duration of treatment in the studies.”

Wayne Dodge, M.D., the HIV/AIDS program director at the Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, suggests that clinicians should obtain blood testosterone levels, “if an HIV-infected individual has had significant weight loss, significant fatigue or muscle wasting, and particularly if associated with a significant decrease in libido and erections. If [testosterone] is in the low or low-normal range then a trial of [steroids] could be tried. The individual and the clinician should decide what result would constitute a successful trial: weight gain of 15 pounds, a 30 percent improvement in sense of well-being [or] a successful erection once a week.”

The reviews authors conclude that further studies are needed to determine if increase in weight leads to improved physical functioning and quality of life, and ultimately increased survival, as well as the potential for serious side effects, especially with prolonged use.

Barriers to HIV Vaccine Response Explored

Researchers at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) discovered that an antibody that binds and neutralizes HIV likely also targets the body's own "self" proteins. This finding could complicate the development of HIV vaccines designed to elicit this protective antibody, called 4E10, and others like it, as doing so might be dangerous or inefficient.

"We developed two new mouse models that allow us to visualize the fate of the rare B cells that can see HIV and we thought could be stimulated by vaccines to produce neutralizing antibodies -- the type of antibodies we seek to produce in response to a vaccine," said David Nemazee, PhD, professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbial Science at TSRI and senior author of the study. "We were able to study vaccine responses of b12, an antibody that sees the CD4 binding site of HIV, but, surprisingly to us, not 4E10, an antibody that sees the stem of the HIV envelope protein."

Nemazee and his team went on to discover that cells with the potential to produce 4E10 antibodies trigger several natural safeguards that shut down the production of any antibody that might recognize and destroy the body's own tissues. They concluded that 4E10 cross-reacts with host tissues in this way, prompting its removal before it can do any harm - or good.

HIV Vaccine Development

4E10 antibodies were originally isolated from a human HIV patient. The antibodies specifically recognize and bind an HIV surface protein called gp41. The virus uses gp41 like a long spike to poke holes in its host's immune cells. But when 4E10 antibodies clog up gp41, the virus is neutralized and host cells are protected.
4E10 especially interests HIV researchers because the antibody recognizes and binds to gp41 on the surface of many different strains of the virus, not just the one strain with which the patient was most recently infected. If a vaccine could be made to specifically and safely stimulate 4E10-like production, recipients would likely be protected against multiple HIV strains.

In humans, HIV slowly destroys the immune system, leading to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 1.1 million people in the U.S. are living with HIV infection. While treatments developed in the past decade can keep the virus in check for many years, there is no vaccine and there is no cure.

Proceeding with Caution

In several ongoing studies, the TSRI team and others are working out how to make a vaccine that stimulates the production of 4E10, b12 and other broadly neutralizing anti-HIV antibodies. However, this latest study indicates that this approach might be complicated by unwanted self-reactivity. Antibodies that cross-react with host tissue -- like 4E10 has now been shown to do -- are associated with autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and lupus.
The TSRI study also raises the question of how 4E10 was generated in the first place. According to Nemazee, 4E10 may be a fluke, cropping up in an HIV patient who was also prone to autoimmune diseases. Alternatively, the autoreactive antibody could have arisen in the patient as a consequence of the disease -- perhaps the body's normal mechanism for weeding out such antibodies failed, allowing the serendipitous production of an anti-HIV antibody.

Despite this new concern, there is still hope for 4E10's role in HIV vaccine development. A companion paper published in the same issue of The Journal of Immunology (http://www.jimmunol.org/content/191/6/3179.long) found that another potent, broadly neutralizing anti-HIV antibody, b12, was not self-reactive and could respond to a candidate vaccine preparation provided by Richard Wyatt, TSRI Professor of Immunology and Director of Viral Immunology at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative Neutralizing Antibody Center.

"It's still possible that we could safely elicit the 4E10-like antibody in order to protect against HIV," Nemazee said. "We just have to think about how to generate the best antibodies without causing other problems. We have a lot of questions. And now we have a good model to help us answer them."

Man cured of AIDS after receiving stem cell transplant

In what many in the mainstream media and medical community have now dubbed their first known case of cured AIDS, Timothy Ray Brown's miraculous healing from the deadly syndrome is sending shock waves throughout the world. After receiving a bone marrow stem cell transplant back in 2007, Brown inherited a genetic immunity from those stem cells that cured him of not only AIDS, but also leukemia.

Dubbed "The Berlin Patient," Brown first tested positive for HIV back in 1995. And for years, he unsuccessfuly battled the disease using conventional methods. But when doctors decided to give him a stem cell transplant, everything changed.

"I quit taking my HIV medication the day that I got the transplant and haven't had to take any since," said Brown to reporters from CBS 5 in San Francisco. "I'm cured of HIV. I had HIV, but I don't anymore."

According to reports, roughly one percent of Caucasians have a natural immunity to HIV and AIDS, and the stem cells Brown received came from someone within this rare one percent. As a result, the white blood cells created in his body via the injected stem cells ended up giving him that same immunity.

Brown's doctors, as well as various other experts and scientific journals, have all confirmed that Brown has been cured of both his AIDS and his leukemia. And Dr. Judy Auerbach from the San Francisco AIDS Foundation told CBS reporters that "things have shifted" in terms of using the word "cure" in reference to AIDS, which is breathing new hope into those hopeful for a cure themselves.

However, despite the numerous references in the media to Brown being the first person ever to have been cured of AIDS, there have actually been many others who have successfully defeated the syndrome through immune support -- but these cases, of course, have been ignored by the mainstream medical and scientific community. In fact, a healthy immune system is the true key to both resisting HIV infection, and successfully reversing it.