Recently, the topic of AIDS has not diminished: on the one hand, "AIDS is a preventable, controllable and curable chronic disease" rushed to the hot search on Weibo, causing heated discussions among netizens; On the other hand, the news of "the emergence of the world's fifth case of AIDS**" has made many people start to speculate: Is mankind not far from "defeating" AIDS?
In this regard, Cai Weiping, chief expert of the Infectious Disease Center of the Eighth Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, reminded in an interview with Nanfang + reporters that to discard illusions, it is impossible to achieve widespread ** in the near future, "After being infected with HIV, we must insist on taking antiviral drugs on time and in accordance with the amount for a long time, which is the key to AIDS for a long time."
AIDS is already a chronic disease.
Regarding the topic of "AIDS is a preventable, controllable and curable chronic disease" rushed to the hot search on Weibo, Cai Weiping said that strictly speaking, this cannot be regarded as "news": "AIDS has long been a chronic disease, and as long as patients adhere to long-term antiviral **, the disease can be better controlled." ”
From the perspective of "preventable and controllable", Cai Weiping said that the transmission of AIDS is through blood, mother and child, and sex. Among them, with the intervention of public health measures taken by the ** department and the whole society, blood and mother-to-child transmission have been effectively controlled. Last year, Guangdong passed a national assessment and became one of the first provinces to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV, syphilis and hepatitis B.
At present, the transmission of HIV is mainly sexually transmitted, so the key to prevention and control is more to raise personal awareness and prevent high-risk sexual behaviors. He said.
Cai Weiping has always emphasized that the public should have a correct understanding of AIDS, and he also reminded that on the one hand, we must overcome the fear of AIDS, "Once some people are diagnosed, they think that they have a terminal illness, feel that 'life is over', and give up, which is not advisable." He said that clinically, even for patients with advanced AIDS, effective antiviral therapy can still be taken if the complications are well controlled.
On the other hand, "preventable, controllable and curable" in no way means encouraging risk-taking and high-risk sexual behavior. He likened that the promotion of wearing seat belts when driving and riding in a car is not to encourage speeding and dangerous driving, but only to provide an extra layer of protection in case of danger.
In Cai Weiping's view, the fact that related topics can be searched shows that the public's understanding of AIDS is still insufficient and misunderstood. "Chronic diseases such as hypertension will not be on the hot search because of this, and the popularization of science about AIDS should continue to be strengthened. He said.
Source: Xinhua News Agency.
Case 5** is not a major breakthrough.
Recently, it was reported that Paul Edmund, a 68-year-old California man, became the fifth person in the world to be affected by AIDS.
Cai Weiping said that after suffering from AIDS, the patient was also diagnosed with leukemia and underwent bone marrow hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. After 5 years, there was almost no HIV in his body, so doctors declared him **.
From the perspective of ** technique, this patient is no different from the previous 4 cases, all of them were undergoing bone marrow hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Cai Weiping said that they received bone marrow or stem cells from donors with a variant in the CCR5δ32 gene, a defect that makes the virus bind to cells without a receptor and blocks viral replication.
However, Cai Weiping observed that compared with the first 4 cases, the 5th patient also has new characteristics: first, he is the longest and oldest patient with the virus among the current patients, which shows that young patients have a great possibility of adopting this **; The second is that the marrow ablation surgery in this case did not completely remove the original bone marrow, which indicates that the difficulty of HIV transplantation through bone marrow hematopoietic stem cell transplantation has been reduced.
However, on the whole, there is no major breakthrough in this case, and it is unrealistic for ordinary AIDS patients to take bone marrow hematopoietic stem cell transplantation **AIDS in the absence of serious blood diseases. That's because bone marrow transplants are extremely risky, he said, and the number of donors with the CCR5δ32 gene variant is so small that it doesn't even exist at all in yellow people. All of this determines that the current reproducibility of AIDS is extremely low.
Therefore, Cai Weiping stressed that after being infected with HIV, it is necessary to insist on taking antiviral drugs on time and in accordance with the amount for a long time, which will still be the key to HIV** for a long time.
Inventory of 5 cases of AIDS **].
In November 2008, the New England Journal of Medicine published a sensational study: a patient from Berlin, Germany, who had both AIDS and acute myeloid leukemia, was treated with both diseases after a bone marrow stem cell transplant for the sake of leukemia. And in the following 2 years, he did not detect HIV in his body without taking antiretroviral drugs (HIV** drugs). This was the first case of AIDS to be "**" and was called the "Berlin Patient". The patient, Timothy Ray Brown, died of cancer** in 2020.
In 2019, a team from the University of London published a new study in Nature, a male patient from London, England, who also had AIDS and Hodgkin lymphoma, stopped AIDS drugs after 16 months of bone marrow transplantation, and no HIV was found in his body**, which was called "London Patient".
Düsseldorf Patient ".
In February 2023, researchers published in the British journal Nature Medicine** that a 53-year-old man from Germany stopped taking HIV medication in 2018 after receiving a stem cell transplant in 2013, and now he has not detected HIV virus in his body for a long time. He is the third confirmed case of an AIDS patient being "**", codenamed "Düsseldorf patient".
In February 2022, researchers in the United States announced the fourth case of AIDS patients who were "**", and the first female AIDS patient in the world to be "**". A woman in New York, USA, who suffers from AIDS and acute myeloid leukemia, has both AIDS and leukemia disappearing after a stem cell transplant. After stopping AIDS medication**, she went up to 14 months without detecting HIV and became known as the "New York Patient."
City of Hope Patients".
In July 2022, City of Hope, one of the largest cancer research and ** organizations in the United States, announced that a 66-year-old AIDS patient who had achieved long-term AIDS remission after stem cell transplantation was a "City of Hope patient". The patient had been carrying HIV for more than 31 years and was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in 2018, followed by a hematopoietic stem cell transplant in early 2019. Since then, his leukemia and AIDS have been in complete remission, and after 17 months of not receiving AIDS medication**, no signs of HIV replication have been found in his body.
Southern + reporter Bian Delong.
Author] Bian Delong.
Guangdong health headlines