hiv question

[Turmoilian]

Is it possible to remove all the blood from a human and immediately inject fresh blood ( of his/her blood type) for removing HIV or will the virus stay in the veins of the human?

[insane_alien]

no, not really. The HIV virus will stick around in other cells which would not be removed by simply transfusing blood. The most notable would be bone marrow cells.

[Greg Boyles]

Is it possible to remove all the blood from a human and immediately inject fresh blood ( of his/her blood type) for removing HIV or will the virus stay in the veins of the human?

 

1) It is impossible to remove every last trace of blood from a human.

 

2) The virus is not entirely restricted the the blood vessels. It almost certainly is also distributed through out the lymphatic system as well, and it is not possible to drain the lymphatic system.

 

3) It is a retrovirus I believe, and retroviruses have the ability to integrate a DNA copy of their RNA genome into the chromosomes of host cells. Even if you could drain all bodily fluids from a human body and then reconstitute it, the virus would still be present in some of the cells and would eventually re-emerge.

[Weirdmaskman]

I dont think that is possible. I only know of Gene therapy where the genes are removed from specific regions (e.g bonemarrow) and cloned genes, introduced. If one wants to apply this method, there are enough bottlenecks like Greg Boyles has listed them, *retrovirus *fast replication *obligate Intracellular and so on.

 

Lets "assume" the blood can be drained maybe posterioly and a blood in-let anterioly, the fact remains that its the same blood the body "circulates" and therefore, no way the body can survive without blood and I think there is no way the blood can be transfused without stain (just an Idea not a theory).

[Moontanman]

Wasn't one guy cured of hiv by whole body irradiation and replacement of his bone marrow with non infected donor cells? I do remember reading about one guy who had his blood recirculated through a machine that for all intents and purposes "pasteurized" his blood and it was cooled and circulated back into his body but it was not completely successful, it did how ever drop the levels of active viral particles in his blood stream.

[Weirdmaskman]

Wasn't one guy cured of hiv by whole body irradiation and replacement of his bone marrow with non infected donor cells? I do remember reading about one guy who had his blood recirculated through a machine that for all intents and purposes "pasteurized" his blood and it was cooled and circulated back into his body but it was not completely successful, it did how ever drop the levels of active viral particles in his blood stream.

 

 

I reason along with you. There had been several suggestions to the possible cure of the virus. That irradiation process has always been on the table, but the risk of damaging the body cells has been the major concern.

Chemotherapy as another means has it issues too. Scientists are still seeking a bodycell friendly-antiretroviral formular. All we've got now are suppresants.

[MichaelPenn]

HIV kills a patient by effectively neutralizing their immune system, with the patient eventually succumbing to opportunistic infection.

 

Now, as we know, white blood cells are synthesized in the marrow. Simply having a marrow transplant isn't enough, because the virus still hangs around. One possible solution is to find someone who produces white blood cells that lack the receptors which HIV often uses to get inside the cells. [Receptors: 'HIV most commonly uses CCR5 and/or CXCR4 as a co-receptor to enter its target cells.'] If you were to take marrow from that individual and transplant it into a patient, they would produce new white blood cells (without the receptors), making it more difficult for HIV to find a way inside. What's the problem? 1. It's rare to find someone lacking such receptors. 2. It's exceptionally difficult to find a bone marrow donor who matches you. (Combine 1 and 2, and the numbers are astronomically low.) 3. This still isn't an end-all solution.

 

Someone above sort of mentioned a case where we witnessed this:

 

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.

Edited January 3, 2012 by Michael Kovich

[Ahsan Iqbal]

There is no way that HIV virus could be removed from the body by changing every single blood cell. The reason is that blood is no the only place where HIV virus stays. As a friend has already mentioned, there are other places like the bone marrow where the virus would stay and there is no way you can remove it from there.