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The transplant method used in this woman’s case is invasive and not appropriate for most people with HIV.
She is believed to be the third person and the first woman to be cured of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
He has been virus-free for 14 months.
It is regarding a patient in the United States who was undergoing treatment for leukemia when she received a stem cell transplant from someone who had a natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS.
But experts warn that the transplant method used, which required blood taken from an umbilical cord, is too dangerous to be used with most people with HIV.
This patient’s case was presented at a medical conference in Denver on Tuesday. Let it know, this is the first time this method has been used as a functional cure for HIV.
The patient received an umbilical cord blood transplant as part of her cancer treatment and has not needed antiretroviral therapy to treat HIV since then.
The case was part of a larger US study of people living with HIV who had received the same type of blood transplant to treat cancer and serious illness.
The transplanted cells that were selected have a specific genetic mutationwhich means that they cannot be infected by the HIV virus.
Scientists believe that the recipients’ immune systems may develop resistance to HIV as a result.
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Hope for a cure for CIH remains pinned on the development of drugs or vaccines.
The challenge of eliminating the virus
Analysis by James Gallagher, BBC Health and Science Correspondent
All the stories of HIV cures are genuinely remarkable and a cause for celebration: they prove that it can be done.
But this approach does not bring us any closer to a cure for the 37 million people living with HIV, most of whom reside in sub-Saharan Africa.
The potential of stem cell transplants was demonstrated in 2007 when Timothy Ray Brown was the first person to be “cured” of HIV. He had a transplant from a donor who was naturally resistant to HIV.
Since then, the feat has been repeated only twice, with Adam Castillejo and now with the New York patient.
All three had cancer and needed a stem cell transplant to save their lives.. Curing your HIV was never the main goal, and therapy is too risky to use on everyone with HIV.
Remember: antiretroviral therapy gives people with HIV a near-normal life expectancy.
The main hopes for a cure remain focused on vaccines or drugs that can eliminate the virus from the body.
The woman’s treatment involved the use of umbilical cord blood, unlike the two previous known cases in which patients had received adult stem cells as part of bone marrow transplants.
Umbilical cord blood is more widely available than previously used adult stem cells and does not require as close a match between donor and recipient.
Sharon Lewin, president-elect of the International AIDS Society, warned that the transplant method used in this case would not be a viable cure for most people living with HIV.
But he added that the case “confirms that a cure for HIV is possible and further strengthens the use of gene therapy as a viable strategy for the cure of HIV.”
The findings around this case study have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, so the broader understanding of it is still limited.
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