There are still many diseases that can be treated but cannot be cured. This also includes an HIV infection, which can trigger the dangerous immune deficiency AIDS. Although nowadays, thanks to numerous medications, it is possible to live an almost normal life with the virus, they do not disappear completely from the body. Nevertheless, doctors in the USA have managed to cure a woman of the HI virus.
“Berlin patient” lived virus-free for 12 years
Four years following her HIV infection, the New Yorker developed blood cancer in 2017. To treat this, the doctor Jingmei Hsu from the Weill Cornell Medicine Center gave her stem cells from the umbilical cord blood from a donor. These should then reach the bone marrow in order to build up a new blood-forming system – a new immune system, so to speak – and to cure the patient of the cancer.
The special feature: the donor’s stem cells are resistant to HIV infection, so that the virus cannot penetrate the new cells. The woman from the USA is not the first person to have been cured of the HI virus. Doctors before her had already successfully treated two patients with resistant stem cells from the bone marrow. The so-called “Berlin patient” was able to live virus-free and without medication for 12 years until he fell ill with cancer once more and died in 2020.
Stem cell therapies are very complex and involve high risks
Jingmei Hsu’s team has also not been able to detect any HI viruses in the “New York patient” for 14 months. However, this method does not offer a treatment method for all HIV patients, as it can only be used for those who also have blood cancer. In addition, stem cell therapy is very complex and involves high risks. Unfortunately, there is no 100% chance of survival.
However, it may be possible to develop a method that gradually alters the stem cells of HIV patients themselves so that they develop resistance to the virus themselves. This procedure is currently being researched but not yet used in patients.