Timothy Ray Brown, the American initially known as the "
Berlin patient
" and who in 2008 became the first man to be cured of HIV, is terminally ill with cancer, his companion announced.
"
Timothy is not dying of HIV, let's be clear,
" Tim Hoeffgen told activist and author Mark King, who posted a blog post on Tuesday and wrote that the couple wanted to come through him to break the news.
“
HIV has not been detected in his blood since he was cured.
Let's go.
There is leukemia.
My God, I hate cancer
”.
“
He's someone you can't help but love, he's so sweet.
Cancer treatments have been very harsh.
Sometimes I wonder if they're not worse than the disease
Tim Hoeffgen added.
Read also: Two transplant patients "cured" of AIDS
Mark King told AFP he spoke to the couple last Saturday on the phone.
Timothy Ray Brown, 54, is in hospice care at their home in Palm Springs, California.
"
I will keep fighting until I can no longer fight,
" the patient told Mark King.
In one photo, he appears bedridden, thin and hairless.
Timothy Ray Brown has written a page in the medical history of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
In 1995 he was living in Berlin when he learned he had been infected with the virus.
Then in 2006, he was diagnosed with leukemia.
To cure him of leukemia, his doctor at the University of Berlin used a stem cell transplant from a donor who had a rare genetic mutation that gave him natural resistance to HIV, in the hope that the transplant cures both diseases.
It took two transplants, heavy and dangerous operations, but the bet succeeded: in 2008, Timothy Ray Brown became cured of both diseases.
The initial announcement had preserved his anonymity as "
patient from Berlin
".
In 2010, he agreed to release his name publicly, and has since become a public figure, speaking in interviews and conferences.
"
I am living proof that there can be a cure for AIDS,
" he told AFP in 2012. "
It is wonderful to be cured of HIV
".
Read also: A patient may be "cured" of AIDS after a transplant
Since then, only one other remission has been announced, in March 2019, thanks to the same method, in the “
patient from London
”, who also revealed his identity afterwards, Adam Castillejo, and is now considered cured.
Because of its heaviness and the risks (the recipient's immune system must first be suppressed by chemotherapy, in order to “
replace
” it with that of the donor), the stem cell transplant method is not considered a way of generalizable treatment, especially today where antiretroviral treatments allow people to live a normal life with HIV.
"
We must weigh the 10% mortality rate for a stem cell transplant and the risk of death if we do nothing,
" virologist Ravindra Gupta of Cambridge University told AFP last March. , who followed the patient from London.
