A German patient infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, and suffering from leukemia, became the third case to be transplanted with human blood stem cells, or hematopoietic stem cells, and cured of both diseases.
International researchers, including the Medical School of Düsseldorf University in Germany, announced in the international journal Nature Medicine on February 20 that a 53-year-old man, the so-called ‘Düsseldorf patient’, received hematopoietic stem cell transplant and was confirmed to have overcome HIV infection following four years of observation. .
The Düsseldorf patient was diagnosed with HIV infection in 2008 and three years later developed acute myelogenous leukemia, a malignant blood cancer. In 2013, he received a bone marrow transplant from a female donor with a rare mutation in the CCR5 gene. This is because the mutation prevents HIV from infecting the patient’s white blood cells.
When HIV enters the body, it multiplies by binding to specific receptors on the surface of white blood cells. However, mutations in CCR5 prevent the receptor from accepting HIV. According to Nature, regarding 1% of people of European descent have this mutation, which is known to make them resistant to HIV infection.
Thanks to this, the patient also stopped taking AIDS medications (antiretroviral drugs) in 2018. Four years later, multiple tests showed no signs of HIV recurrence.
“I am grateful to the medical staff for their success in treating HIV and leukemia simultaneously,” he said in a statement.
Previously, two other patients were also judged to be cured of HIV through bone marrow transplantation. The first of these was Timothy Ray Brown, an American man who was also known as a Berlin patient. He underwent a hematopoietic stem cell transplant for the treatment of acute leukemia in Berlin, the capital of Germany. The next cured person is known to have been treated in London, the capital of England.
In addition, a report was presented at an academic conference last year that two patients were treated and cured in New York and City of Hope, USA. However, studies on these cases have not yet been published in academic journals and are not officially recognized.
A cure for HIV has long been a subject of research. However, bone marrow transplantation is not well used as a single treatment for HIV because it is risky and can suppress the virus even with drug treatment.
Reporter Yoon Tae-hee th20022@seoul.co.kr
