An AIDS cure? Doctors say bone marrow transplant worked

November 13, 7:07 AMBusiness ExaminerDarrell Proctor

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The healthcare industry may have scored a revolutionary success with a procedure that could change the way many AIDS patients are treated.

An American man with the disease appears to have been cured by doctors in Berlin who treated him with a targeted bone marrow transplant in a process usually used on leukemia patients.

Doctors immediately said the man's recovery could be a fluke. But they also noted that the apparent recovery - coming 20 months after receiving the marrow transplant - might show that gene therapy can tackle AIDS.

The man was not identified; doctors said only that he's a 42-year-old American living in Berlin who also had developed leukemia. AIDS kills some 2 million people each year; 33 million worldwide have the virus.

Doctors at Berlin's Charite hospital say tests on the man's blood, organ tissues and bone marrow have been clean, though doctors elsewhere warn the tests may not have been extensive enough to prove conclusively that the man has been cured.

Bone marrow transplants have been used on AIDS patients before, and to treat patients with HIV, the virus behind the disease. A 1999 article in Medical Hypotheses said the treatment was successful in two of 32 cases between 1982 and 1996.

Doctors did not say how much the man's treatment cost, but did say the expense - and the risk - would make it prohibitive for general use. They said they hoped it would spur more interest in gene therapy.