Medical breakthrough
USA: Woman apparently cured of HIV thanks to stem cell therapy
16.02.2022, 16:16
| Reading time: 2 minutes
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New York
Doctors in the US have apparently cured a woman of HIV. A new type of therapy has now made the medical breakthrough possible.
According to their own statements, doctors have cured a woman who was suffering from leukemia and the HI virus. It is only the third case in medical history in which HIV patients have been successfully treated. The so-called “New York patient” is also the first woman to have a successful HIV Cure was carried out.
The treating doctors presented the results of their treatment on Tuesday at a specialist conference. Ten research institutes and universities were involved in the study of the case, in which for the first time a novel stem cell therapy was used.
HIV cure: New stem cell therapy gives hope
At the so-called Haplo/Umbilical Cord Transplant the patient received a mixture of stem cells from a relative and those from an infant’s umbilical cord. The latter contained a rare genetic trait that makes people resistant to the HI virus. Part of a DNA section of the CCR5 gene is missing. As a result, the HI virus can no longer infect cells.
14 months ago have the “New York Patient” discontinued the medication she received after the stem cell transplant, explained one of the study leaders, Yvonne J. Bryson, on Tuesday at the “Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections”. Since then, the virus has no longer been detectable in the blood.
To the standard therapy However, the bone marrow transplant cannot be done, said Sharon Lewin, president of the International AIDS Society of the “Washington Post”. “But it represents ‘proof of concept’ that HIV can be cured. It also reinforces the use of gene therapy as a viable strategy for an HIV cure,” Lewin added.