An American leukemia patient has become the first woman and the third person in the world to be cured of HIV following receiving a stem cell transplant from a donor naturally resistant to the virus that causes AIDS, researchers reported on Tuesday (February 15th). .
The case of a 64-year-old mixed-race woman, presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Denver, is also the first involving umbilical cord blood, a newer approach that might make treatment available to more people. .
Since receiving cord blood to treat her acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer that starts in the blood-forming cells of the bone marrow, the woman has been in remission and virus-free for 14 months, without the need for strong treatments once morest HIV known as antiretroviral therapy.
The previous two cases occurred in men, a white and a Latino, who had received adult stem cells, which are more commonly used in bone marrow transplants.
“This is now the third report of a cure in this setting, and the first in a woman living with HIV,” Sharon Lewin, president-elect of the International AIDS Society, said in a statement.
The case is part of a larger US-backed study led by Dr Yvonne Bryson of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Dr Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
The woman in question was diagnosed with HIV in 2013 and leukemia in 2017, making her a potential candidate.
She received the treatment four years ago, and since her cancer went into remission, her HIV treatment was discontinued last winter.
Her body responded well to the treatment, doctors report, and she soon saw positive results.
Despite quitting HIV treatment more than a year ago, the virus has not resurfaced in her. Repeated scans of his body show no HIV cells with the potential to replicate. They also took cells from his body and tried to infect them in a lab, and failed.
If a few more years pass and the doctors still cannot find HIV in her body and cannot infect her cells, they will declare her “cured” of the virus.
“I’m so glad it turned out so well for her,” Dr. Yvonne Bryson told NBC.
She added that the New York patient’s case added “more hope and more options for the future” of HIV treatment.
