Since receiving umbilical cord blood for treatment of acute myeloid leukemia, the woman’s AIDS symptoms had been dormant and the virus was cleared for 14 months.
16/2/2022–|Last update: 16/2/202206:46 PM (Mecca)
An American patient with leukemia has become the first woman and third person ever to recover from HIV, which causes AIDS, following undergoing a stem cell transplant from a donor who was naturally resistant to the virus, researchers reported. .
The case of the middle-aged woman of more than one race was presented at a conference on retroviruses and opportunistic infections in Denver, Colorado. Cord blood was used for the first time, a new treatment method that may make treatment available to a larger number of patients.
Since receiving cord blood for treatment of acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer that begins in blood-forming cells in the bone marrow, the woman’s AIDS symptoms had been dormant and the virus was cured for 14 months, without the need for strong HIV treatments known as HIV. Antiretroviral treatments.
Two previous cases of AIDS cure
The two previous cases of recovery occurred in males, one white and the other Latino, following receiving adult stem cells, a method more commonly used in bone marrow transplants.
“This is the third announcement of a case-recovery using this method, and the first for a woman living with HIV,” Sharon Lewin, president-elect of AIDS International, said in a statement.
The case was part of a larger US-backed study led by Dr. Yvonne Bryson of UCLA and Dr. Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
The study aims to follow up 25 people infected with HIV, who underwent a transplant of stem cells taken from umbilical cord blood to treat cancer and other serious diseases.
A genetic mutation that makes cells no longer carry the receptors used by the HIV virus
Patients in the trial undergo chemotherapy first to kill cancer cells. Doctors then transplant stem cells from individuals who have a specific genetic mutation who do not have the receptors that the virus uses to infect the cells.
Scientists believe that these people then develop an immune system that resists the “HIV” virus that causes acquired immunodeficiency virus.
Lewin said that bone marrow transplants are not a viable strategy for treating the majority of people infected with HIV, but she pointed out that the report “confirms that treatment of HIV is possible, and is further enhanced by the use of gene therapy as a viable strategy to treat this virus.”
The study indicates that an important component of success is the transplantation of HIV-resistant cells.
