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Scientists have published a study for the first time that reports the first ever case of a woman being cured of HIV with a transfusion of umbilical cord blood, which contains cells with the CCR5-Δ32 mutation.
This publication reports TASS Science.
This unique mutation is able to protect CD4 lymphocytes from virus entry. At the same time, the patient was also cured of the state of “graft versus host” – and in fact in the previous three cases, the cure for HIV was not achieved.
This case of curing HIV is unique – the patient was a woman of mixed origin for the first time in the history of treatment. In addition, mutant cells were obtained from cord blood, which was stored in a blood bank. The third reason for uniqueness is described above.
Physicians are inspired by this story and believe that HIV cures might be much more accessible if more cord blood banks were more thoroughly screened for samples with CCR5-Δ32 mutations.
