An international team of researchers announced that new evidence shows the earliest cases of HIV/AIDS circulating between humans occured between 1884 and 1924 in sub-Saharan Africa. A man in Berlin, Germany seems to be cured of AIDS after doctors gave him transplanted blood stem cells from a person naturally resistant to the virus. Such a treatment is difficult, the patient's immune system must essentially be shut down and restarted with the new stem cells, but first a donor must be found who is a good tissue match for the patient and has a rare genetic mutation, called Delta 32, which is resistant to H.I.V. People who have Delta 32 produce white blood cells in the bone marrow which lack the surface receptors that allow H.I.V. to invade the immune system.
http://events.yahoo.com/worldaidsday/
http://events.yahoo.com/worldaidsday/
