February 21, 2023 – A 53-year-old man in Germany is taken into account cured of HIV.
The man was treated for acute myeloid leukemia in 2013 with donor stem cells known to have an HIV-resistant mutation. The 53-year-old said he desired to become involved in raising funds for the research.
Since the bone marrow transplant, researchers found immune cells within the patient's body that responded to HIV, in addition to signs that the virus was not replicating. When scientists transplanted the patient's cells into mice, the virus could not replicate. As a final test to see if he was cured, the patient stopped taking HIV treatment called ART (antiretroviral therapy), which suppresses HIV replication, in 2018.
“It shows that it is not impossible – it is just very difficult – to remove HIV from the body,” Dr. Björn-Erik Jensen, one among the patient's doctors, told the magazine. Naturewhich published the outcomes on Tuesday.
The patient is at the very least the third person to be declared cured, Nature reported. Declaring someone cured happens when it is set that the virus isn’t any longer replicating or being stored within the body. The German man – or the “Düsseldorf patient,” as he’s now called – may very well be the fifth person to be cured, in response to abc news.
But the treatment that cured him is unlikely to be offered to HIV patients who don’t leukemiaa cancer that affects the blood-producing parts of the body, equivalent to the bone marrow. The reason for that is the high risks of the procedure. Nature reported. However, researchers are investigating whether the bone marrow of HIV patients may be genetically modified in order that it has the identical mutation that was present within the transplant of the Düsseldorf patient.
More than 38 million people worldwide are infected with HIV. The virus attacks the body's immune system by destroying white blood cells, increasing the chance of further infections. Recently, promising vaccine trials against HIV were stopped since the experimental treatments weren’t effective.