Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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United Press International; Saturday February 14 6:33 PM EST
Mara Bovsun, UPI Science News
Jeff Getty says after getting the bone marrow, his viral load dropped to undetectable levels and the cells of the immune system bounced back for about a year.
But now, the Oakland, Calif., man says he is back in a declining phase, and his viral load numbers are up and the counts for his immune cells is down. He had the highly controversial transplant in 1985 to help him fight the AIDS virus. He says, "I was quite nearly dead when I went into this thing. Now I'm slowly declining, going back to where I was."
Getty, who has been HIV-positive for 18 years, was speaking today at a session on xenotransplantation _ animal-to-human transplants _ at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Getty says there hasn't been a sign of any baboon DNA in his system since about three weeks after the transplant, and he does not know why he had a hiatus in his disease.
One reason for the drop in viral load, he says, may not have been related to the baboon marrow, but more to the deadly doses of radiation needed to prepare his body for the experiment.
Getty says, however, "I believe I survived because of the transplant." He is currently taking a cocktail of anti-HIV drugs and is looking for other therapy options.
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