Johnson & Johnson HIV vaccine trial fails 0:41
(CNN) -
Researchers say they have found a second patient whose body appears to have rid itself of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, bolstering hope that one day a way to heal more may be found. people of that disease.
The patient has not received any regular treatment for her infection, but is a rare "elite controller" of the virus who, eight years after being first diagnosed, shows no signs of active infection or signs of intact virus in her body the researchers reported Monday.
This has only been recorded once before.
Air pollution would take millions more years off their lives than smoking, war or HIV / AIDS
The international team of scientists reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine magazine that the patient, originally from the city of Esperanza (Argentina), did not show signs of intact HIV in a large number of her cells, suggesting that she may have succeeded in naturally what they describe as a "sterilizing cure" for HIV infection.
Second patient
The 30-year-old woman in the new study is only the second patient described to have achieved this sterilizing cure without the help of a stem cell transplant or other treatment.
The other patient was a 67-year-old woman named Loreen Willenberg.
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"Until now, a sterilizing cure for HIV has only been observed in two patients who received a highly toxic bone marrow transplant. Our study shows that such a cure can also be achieved during natural infection, in the absence of bone marrow transplants (or any type of treatment), "wrote Dr. Xu Yu of the Ragon Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT and Harvard, who authored the study, in an email to CNN on Monday.
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"Examples of such a cure occurring naturally suggest that current efforts to find a cure for HIV infection are not elusive, and that the prospects of reaching an 'AIDS-free generation' may be finally successful, "Yu wrote.
Yu, Dr. Natalia Laufer from Argentina, and their colleagues analyzed blood samples collected from the 30-year-old patient with HIV between 2017 and 2020. She had a baby in March 2020, allowing the scientists to also collect tissue from the placenta.
Diagnosed in 2013
The patient was first diagnosed with HIV in March 2013. She did not start any antiretroviral treatment until 2019, when she became pregnant and began treatment with the drugs tenofovir, emtricitabine, and raltegravir for six months in the second and third trimesters of her pregnancy. , the researchers noted.
After delivering a healthy, HIV-negative baby, she stopped therapy.
An analysis of billions of cells in her blood and tissue samples showed that she had previously been infected with HIV, but during the analysis, the researchers found no intact virus capable of replicating.
All they could find were seven defective proviruses, a form of a virus that integrates into the genetic material of a host cell as part of the replication cycle.
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The researchers aren't sure how the patient's body was able to apparently rid itself of the replication-competent, intact virus, but "we think it's a combination of different immune mechanisms - cytotoxic T cells are likely involved, the mechanism innate immune may also have contributed, "Yu wrote in his email.
"Expanding the number of individuals with a possible sterilizing cure condition would facilitate our discovery of the immunological factors that lead to this sterilizing cure in a broader population of HIV-infected individuals."
Around 38 million people are living with HIV infection worldwide.
If left untreated, the infection can lead to acquired immune deficiency syndrome or AIDS.
Last year, some 690,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses worldwide.
HIV AIDS
