Steve Crohn's HIV Immunity Discovery

Stephen "Steve" Crohn, an American from New York City, carried a homozygous CCR5 ?32 deletion mutation on his CD4? T cells, which blocked most HIV strains from entering his immune cells and conferred near complete resistance to infection. Tragically, after witnessing well over 70 friends succumb to AIDS, he died by suicide at age 66 in August 2013, reportedly struggling with survivor guilt despite having avoided the disease himself.

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