US doctors say they have cured a woman with HIV for the first time. This was made possible by a new stem cell therapy.
A woman in the US was diagnosed with HIV and leukemia. The doctors now announced that they were able to cure the woman. A so-called “haplo/umbilical cord transplant” was performed on the Latin American woman. The baby’s umbilical cord stem cells contained a rare genetic trait that makes people resistant to HIV. This is the CCR5 gene, which makes it impossible for the HI virus to infect cells. This peculiarity occurs predominantly in people of Northern European or Caucasian descent.
Other cases of successful treatment known
The woman also received stem cells from a relative, writes the “Washington Post“. After the stem cell transplant, the woman was still on medication, but stopped it 14 months ago. To date, the HIV infection has not returned. And the concentration of the virus in the blood was not detectable.
A new method was used for the treatment for the first time. Ten research institutes and universities were involved in a study on the case. The woman is one of three cases of successful treatment for HIV-infected people. Two other patients had self-healed.
The treatment was led by Dr. Yvonne J. Bryson, she is a Pediatric Infectious Disease Specialist at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, along with her fellow professionals JingMei Hsu, Koen Van Besien, and Marshall J. Glesby.
Berlin patient died of leukemia
A man with leukemia who became known as the “Berlin patient” received a transplant of HIV-resistant stem cells. The doctors then announced that he was cured. However, he later died of leukemia. A decade later, the approach was applied to the “London patient,” a South American man with Hodgkin lymphoma. A man in Düsseldorf is said to be in a similar therapy.
The discovery strengthens hope for a cure for HIV and AIDS, but is still a long way from a standard therapy.
