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Healing for HIV infection: Another HIV patient healed with stem cell transplantation
Yes, HIV infection can be cured. Three HIV infected people have been cured so far. In all of these cases, a hematopoietic stem cell transplant was performed, which is used in the treatment of serious blood cancers. Two HIV patients had previously been cured through this medical intervention. The third case was published this week in Nature Medicine. It was diagnosed by an international group of doctors and researchers from Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain and the United States. It was also the first time that the HIV patient's successful healing process was accurately characterized virologically and immunologically over a period of 10 years, the researchers said. Meet …
Healing for HIV infection: Another HIV patient healed with stem cell transplantation
Yes, HIV infection can be cured. Three HIV infected people have been cured so far. In all of these cases, a hematopoietic stem cell transplant was performed, which is used in the treatment of serious blood cancers. Two HIV patients had previously been cured through this medical intervention. The third case was published this week in Nature Medicine. It was diagnosed by an international group of doctors and researchers from Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain and the United States.
It was also the first time that the successful healing process of the HIV patient was virologically and immunologically characterized over a period of 10 years, the researchers said.
Meet the third patient who is completely cured of HIV
A 53-year-old man from Düsseldorf is the third person in the world who was completely healed by the human immune deficiency virus (HIV). He was treated in the Düsseldorf University Hospital because of his HIV infection and received a stem cell transplant due to a blood cancer.
The first two HIV patients cured in the past were named “Berlin” and “London”. Like these first two cases, the Düsseldorf patient also received stem cells from a healthy donor. The donor's genome contains a mutation in the gene for the HIV-1 co-receptor CCR5, which makes it impossible for most human immunodeficiency viruses to invade human CD4+ T lymphocytes, their main target cells, according to a report in Science Daily.
After the stem cell transplant, the patient was closely monitored virologically and immunologically for almost 10 years. Researchers analyzed his blood and tissue samples shortly after the transplant and throughout the study period using a range of sensitive techniques, but failed to detect replicating viruses, antibodies or reactive immune cells against HIV.
The patient had dropped the antiviral therapy against HIV more than four years ago. Ten years after the stem cell transplantation and four years after the end of anti-HIV therapy, the Düsseldorf patient was declared healed by the international research group.