2010-12-15, 02:10 PM
Swerve Wrote:According to the New England Journal of Medicine article, he was on Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) before implantation. Focusing solely on the pre-implantation phase, the presence of HIV1-RNA barely showed up when they attempted to scan for it using Northern Blot or a similar category of tests used to assay for the RNA band. When they took him off HAART then the HIV1-RNA picked up again. Therefore they decided to keep him on it and once again the HIV1-RNA disappeared. The implant took place when HIV1-RNA levels were extremely low, therefore indicating that the HIV machinery used to reproduce (i.e. reverse transcriptase) was not actively present when the mutant red blood cells were given to the patient.
And they don't do this HAART thing for everyone? Or at least, for most patients?