More and more people can be cured of HIV disease.
Now there is a new case that has never happened before.
New York – So far, three people have been cured of HIV disease.
Now there appears to be a fourth case.
A woman from New York, USA, most likely defeated both her leukemia and the HI virus through a transplant of special stem cells from umbilical cord blood.
This is reported by US scientists in the journal
Cell
.
The case has a special component.
After a woman was declared cured of HIV for the first time in early 2022, followed a few months later by a man who had been infected with the HI virus for 31 years, a non-white woman is now considered to have recovered for the first time.
First non-white woman apparently cured of HIV disease
The previous patients all received a special stem cell transplant due to a parallel cancer.
Those stem cells had a specific gene mutation called CCR5-Delta32.
This mutation ensures that there is no docking site for HIV on the immune cells.
Without this, the virus cannot find an entry point and cannot infect the cells, which makes carriers of the mutation almost resistant to the pathogen.
However, only about one percent of people in the white population are carriers of this mutation, and even fewer in other groups, explained lead author Yvonne Bryson in a press conference on the study.
"It is extremely rare for people of different races or races to find a sufficiently matched unrelated adult donor."
Discontinued HIV medication 37 months after transplantation – “Today the patient is doing very well”
In a stem cell transplant, however, it is crucial to have as close a match as possible between donor and recipient, Bryson said.
Therefore, in 2017, the team decided to transplant stem cells with the rare mutation from umbilical cord blood to the non-white patient.
Obviously with success.
Both the HIV disease and the leukemia were contained and the antiviral HIV medication was discontinued after 37 months.
Almost at the same time, the news followed that a Brazilian had become free of the HI virus through medication.
"Today the patient is doing very well, traveling, visiting her family and enjoying her life," said medical doctor Jingmei Hsu.
According to Hsu, however, it will still take a while before one can speak of a complete cure.
Although no virus residues can still be detected in the New York patient, certainty will only come in the next few years.
Researchers discovered a previously unknown, more aggressive HIV variant last year.
(mt/dpa)
