With advances in medicine being made every day, sometimes it’s easy to miss some of the interesting – and possibly life-saving – innovations being introduced to the market. One of these innovations is the Hemopurifier, a device that will reportedly purify a patient’s blood of viruses just as a dialysis machine purifies the blood of liver patients.Developed by Aethlon Medical Inc. (OTCBB: AEMD), a pioneer in new and inventive medical technology, the Hemopurifier promises to advance medical technology by several years.
According to the company’s Web site, the Hemopurifier “converges the established scientific principals of hollow-fiber dialysis and affinity chromatography with the discovery of affinity agents that selectively bind envelope viruses,” resulting in an “affinity treatment cartridge that separates and captures circulating viruses, viral proteins, and toxins before the occurrence of cell and organ infection.” In other words, blood is fed through the Hemopurifier, where the viruses are filtered out before the blood is returned to the body.
“The end goal of technology is to have a device that mimics the body’s own natural immune responses and its ability to clear viruses and toxins from circulation before the host becomes infected,” Aethlon CEO James Joyce told MN1. “Our goal is to have the Hemopurifier do what the body’s natural immune system does. In our cartridge, there are two steps involved with capturing viruses and toxins from circulation. When blood travels through cartridge, it travels through several thousand hollow fibers which are porous in nature. The pores are large enough to let viruses escape but not the blood cells. Once the viruses are removed from circulation and then bound within the cartridge.”
Highly technical information, but it works well enough to interest a number of government agencies, both national and international. First of all, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention recently announced that they were considering the Hemopurifier as a potential treatment for Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever, and that research was being extended to include researchers at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID).
The most interesting piece of information comes from India, however; the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune, India, recently found that the device can remove an amazing 99.6 percent of the dengue virus – one of the most dreaded diseases of India and, now, South America – from a patient’s bloodstream within half an hour.
The main danger of the dengue virus is Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever (DHF), a deadly disease transmitted mainly by mosquitoes. This fever usually manifests along with a severe headache, and muscle and joint pains. Cases of DHF also show higher fever, haemorrhagic phenomena and haemoconcentration. A small proportion of cases lead to Dengue Shock Syndrome (DSS) which has a high mortality rate.
Even worse, the CDC has information posted on its Web site (www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/dengue) that suggests the disease is spreading though the Americas, primarily in South America and thickly forested equatorial regions, and had spread as far as northern Mexico by 2005.
The worst thing about dengue, however, is that there’s no drug or vaccine available to treat it – hence, the NIV’s interest in Aethlon’s Hemopurifier.
“[The NIV was] able to demonstrated that our cartridge captures 99.6 percent of infection in first 30 minutes, so we are going … to take steps to treat people in the upcoming Dengue season in India, as well as initiate other studies in humans in India.” Joyce said. “All parties involved are optimistic that the Hemopurifier could be the firs treatment available for dengue fever infected.”
Joyce felt that if the disease is truly spreading toward the United States of America, then the Hemopurifier was the best bet at battling the disease.
“I think we’re ahead of the curve of what’s going to be happening in the next couple of years,” Joyce said. “It’s pretty easy to connect the dots and come to the conclusion that it’ll be a health issue talked about regularly in the U.S. media.”
In response to the news, share prices for Aethlon Medical rose 12.50 percent, rising to 67 cents a share by mid-afternoon.
