[The Epoch Times, February 28, 2023](Compiled and reported by The Epoch Times reporter Lin Da) On February 20, the researchers published in “Nature‧MedicineA 53-year-old man diagnosed with HIV in 2008 is free of the virus following receiving a stem cell transplant, reports the journal Nature Medicine. He is at least the third AIDS patient to be cured by this type of stem cell transplant. But the researchers say the approach may be too risky for patients who do not also have cancer.
Last year, researchers announced that two other patients had also recovered from the virus, but papers on the two patients have yet to be published, AFP reported.
The latest patient to be cured underwent a stem cell transplant to treat his leukemia. Stem cells are primitive cells in the human body that have the potential for self-replication and multilineage differentiation. Most importantly, doctors choose to use donor cells with mutations that make them resistant to AIDS. So far, he has stopped taking AIDS control drugs for 4 years and has not shown any signs of active infection.
according to”natural news“(Nature News) reported that despite the success of this approach, it is unlikely to be widely used, because of the high-risk nature of this treatment, AIDS patients without leukemia are unlikely to receive this treatment. But curing one patient does help scientists better understand how to cure others.
Todd Ellerin, an infectious disease expert who was not involved in the study, told >, “This is obviously a step forward in moving the science forward and giving us some kind of understanding of what it takes to cure AIDS.”
In 2021, 38.4 million people worldwide will be living with HIV, or Human Immunodeficiency Virus, which attacks the body’s immune system and weakens its defenses once morest diseases such as tuberculosis, fungal infections and certain cancers. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there is currently no cure for AIDS. But antiretroviral therapy (ART) has made it less deadly and more manageable. In the 1980s, a person’s life expectancy following an AIDS diagnosis was one year, but it is now close to normal.
The patient underwent stem cell therapy in 2013 following being diagnosed with leukemia in 2011.
The first person cured of AIDS by a stem cell transplant was Berlin resident Timothy Ray Brown. Brown underwent a transplant in 2007 and died in 2020. After the transplant, Brown did not contract the virus and did not receive antiretroviral treatment. Later, scientists reported that London patient Adam Castillejo, who had a stem cell transplant in 2019, was also cured.
Sharon Lewin, an infectious disease expert at the University of Melbourne in Australia and president of the International AIDS Society, who is not one of the paper’s authors, told The Washington Post that stem cell transplants “are not a reasonable strategy for the 38 million people living with AIDS.” “.
Today, researchers are testing whether a patient’s stem cells can be genetically modified, rather than transplanted, to have HIV-resistant cell mutations. Lewin told The Washington Post that “some strides have been made” in the past five years that might make the treatment “pretty feasible.”
“I think we can learn from this case and Insights from several other similarly cured AIDS cases,” “and give some hints as to where we can go to make treatment strategies safer.” ◇
Responsible Editor: Sun Yun#