Life
Simon Barasa-Situma – a Kenyan researcher reports success in providing HIV cure
A Kenyan researcher, Dr. Simon Barasa-Situma of the Technical University of Kenya, has modified the world’s first recorded HIV “cure” and says it has worked effectively on four of his patients and that another 18 currently under observation “are doing well”.
“Consecutive tests show they carry no virus, but we have to monitor them for at least six to 12 months to be sure they are free of HIV,” explained Barasa-Situma, during a presentation at the Second World Virology and Microbiology Conference in New York.
“I have demonstrated the HIV cure in two people by stopping rapid multiplication of CD4 progenitor cells in the bone marrow, where the HIV virus hides to avoid elimination by the immune system and thus achieved the first complete cure without bone marrow transplantation,” Barasa-Situma said.
His treatment, he says, is based on the world’s first known cure of HIV, that of Timothy Ray Brown, 47, who was diagnosed with HIV in 1995 and put on Antiretroviral drugs, but in 2006 developed leukaemia and, for this reason, was given a bone marrow transplant with a rare gene mutation that provides natural resistance to HIV.
“Removing the bone marrow, where the CD4 cells replicate, denied the virus the capacity to replicate and consequently the patient was free of HIV,” says Barasa-Situma. Since the new bone marrow was resistant to the virus, the already existing bugs in circulation and from the secondary reservoirs — which include the brain, glands, intestines, and skin — could not create new hideouts, hence the ultimate eradication of the virus.
Bone marrow transplantation is a very expensive, specific, and dangerous procedure, which makes Brown’s treatment impossible to apply to the more than 30 million people with HIV. However, according to Barasa-Situma, purging the virus from some specific locations where it seems to hide is the way out.
“This means there is a reservoir in the body where the virus is hiding and where the Antiretroviral drugs are not able to reach. The hideout is in some parts of the bone marrow. Get rid of this reservoir and, theoretically, you are home and dry,” Barasa-Situma says, adding that he has achieved this using a method that comprises the use of a cancer drug (methotraxate) in combination with other agents. Two patients who have undergone the therapy, he adds, have shown no signs of the virus for the past six months.
Barasa-Situma, has since applied for a patent with the Kenya Industrial Property Institute for the treatment process, titled Cure for HIV/Aids Virus.
“Our methodology is simple, safe, acceptable, and cheap, although not yet scientifically validated,” says Barasa-Situma in his case study. He says two patients, a man aged 29 and a woman aged 40, both of whom had previously been diagnosed with HIV and put on antiretroviral medication, “are now functionally cured”.
Source: Daily Nation