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Can stem-cell therapy help in eradicating HIV and AIDS?

• Came across a couple of articles about how stem-cell therapy managed to cure two persons of HIV. I'm curious about the veracity of these articles and the possibility of stem-cell therapy as a cure for AIDS. - http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-04/stem-cell-therapy-wipes-out-hiv-in-two-patients/4798396 - http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/03/us-hiv-stemcells-idUSBRE9620IL20130703

• Answer:

  Hematopoietic stem cell transplants are used such that bone marrow harvested from an individual with the CCR5-delta32 genotype is transplanted into the HIV patient. T-cells derived from the transplanted marrow with the CCR5-d32 genotype have a mutation in their CCR5 surface proteins, which is a co-receptor that HIV needs to bind to enter cells. This mutation prevents or severely hinders HIV entry into cells. Patients who have been "functionally" cured of HIV are often leukemia patients who warrant such a transplant. Bone marrow transplants for the sake of transplants may cure others of HIV but along with that comes complications such as host vs. graft disease, infections, and the need to take immunosuppresents for life (which isn't too different from having HIV anyways...). So basically  you're trading one form of pain and suffering for another form of pain and suffering. Whether such a tradeoff is acceptable is up to each patient and their physician. Now, the silver lining in all this is that if we are able to take the patient's own bone marrow cells, re-program them with the CCR5d32 mutation, and then transplant it back, it may avoid the need to immunosuppress indefinitely. That's the field of gene therapy and some promising work is being done there.