New hope for some 40 million people living with HIV. A man is believed to be the third known recovery from human immunodeficiency virus infection. nicknamed the “Patient from Dusseldorf”the latter is no longer under the heavy antiretroviral therapy (ART) – the main treatment for HIV – which has been able to control the infection and reduce the amount of virus to undetectable levels in the blood for four years.
He stopped his treatment following receiving a stem cell transplant following leukaemia. After the final tests, the international consortium I’m here announced that he was “probably cured of HIV infection”.
Before him, two Caucasian men with cancer known as “patient from Berlin” – Timothy Ray Brown – and the “patient of London” – Adam Castillejo – were cured of HIV following receiving the same bone marrow stem cell transplants from a person with genetic resistance to HIV.
To date, there is no known cure for HIV, but does the fact that a third person has successfully eradicated the virus from their body mean that everything is regarding to change?
The Berlin patient: The first cured?
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple, but there is evidence to suggest that there are treatments that have been successful in reversing the condition.
Timothy Ray Brown was an American considered the first man clinically cured of HIV. In 1995 he was living in Berlin when he learned he had contracted the virus and in 2006 he was diagnosed with leukaemia. Two stem cell transplants were needed to put him into remission. In 2008, Brown was declared cured of HIV and cancer.
His case was hailed as a great victory, and in 2010 he agreed to come clean by becoming a public figure. “I am living proof that there may be a cure for AIDS”he said in an interview with theAFP in 2012. Sadly in 2020, Ray Brown passed away from remission from his leukemia.
Patients in London and New York: cause for hope?
For a long time, Ray Brown was considered an isolated case. In 2019, Adam Castillo, a 43-year-old naturalized British Venezuelan, becomes the second person in the world to be cured of HIV. He endured a decade of brutal treatment before becoming what he called “an ambassador of hope”.
Just like the “Patient from Dusseldorf”, a third patient may have overcome the HIV virus. This is a middle-aged mixed-race woman, who has gone into remission from HIV. She wanted to remain anonymous and was baptized “New York patient”.
The woman received a different type of treatment from others: instead of bone marrow stem cells from donors, she received stem cells from the umbilical cord of a newborn baby who was naturally immune to HIV.
In 2022, the woman decided to withdraw from antiretroviral therapy, and more than 14 months later still showed no signs of HIV. However, his apparent remission – which paved the way for HIV treatment for a wider range of people using umbilical cord blood – is often questioned, following some researchers warned it was too early to tell. be sure of the treatment.
The “Dusseldorf Patient”
In a study published last week in the scientific journal Naturescientists welcomed the news of the “Düsseldorf patient”, becoming “at least” the third HIV-positive person to be cleared of the virus.
For years, antiretroviral therapy has been given to people living with HIV to reduce the virus to almost undetectable levels, preventing it from being passed on to other people.
But the immune system is smart enough to keep the virus locked in reservoirs in the body, and when patients stop taking antiretroviral treatment, the virus often begins to replicate and spread. A real cure would eliminate this reservoir, and that is what would have happened to the three former patients, according to the scientists.
In subsequent examinations, scientists failed to identify antibodies once morest the virus, which is a sign of its activity.
Are stem cells the way forward?
Scientists believe that stem cell transplants will never be a scalable treatment for HIV because they are highly invasive and carry too many risks. Although the study authors claim that the future of HIV-resistant stem cells is not “neither a low-risk nor easily scalable procedure”its relevance is evidenced by recent reports of successful long-term HIV-1 remission following using the procedure.
But the science behind every complete remission known to date is still important. The researchers believe that further research on this approach “might hold promise for a cure of HIV-1 apart from life-threatening hematological malignancies”that is, cases of cancer that begin in blood-forming tissues, such as leukemia and lymphoma.
The scientists also say that the observations made in the case of the Düsseldorf patient might provide “valuable information that will hopefully guide future healing strategies”.
HIV infection is currently incurable, but it can be controlled and brought under control with antiretroviral treatment. However, of the nearly 38 million people living with HIV worldwide, 10 million of them do not have access to treatment.
A cure is essential to end the decades-old pandemic
Janssen Pharmaceuticals announced last January the end of trials for the only HIV vaccine in advanced trials, which experts have deemed ineffective.
More “there are other strategic approaches”said the Dr. Anthony Faucithe US public health official who led the US response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Scientists compare curing every new patient with a bone marrow cell transplant is like sending someone to the moon: “It’s great science, but it’s not the way we’re going to travel”.
