A US patient with leukemia has become the first woman and third person ever to recover from HIV after undergoing a transplant of stem cells from a donor who was naturally resistant to the virus, researchers said on Tuesday.
The case of the middle-aged woman of more than one ethnicity was presented at a conference on retroviral and opportunistic infections in Denver, where cord blood was used for the first time, a new treatment method that could make treatment available to more patients.
Since receiving cord blood for treatment of acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer that begins in the blood-forming cells in the bone marrow, the woman’s AIDS symptoms had been dormant and the virus was cleared for 14 months, without the need for strong HIV treatments known as anti-retroviral therapies. for retroviruses.
The two previous cases of recovery occurred in males, after they received adult stem cells, a method more commonly used in bone marrow transplants.
“This is the third announcement of a case-recovery using this method, and the first for a woman living with HIV,” Sharon Lewin, president-elect of AIDS International, said in a statement.
The case formed part of a larger US-backed study led by Dr. Yvonne Bryson of UCLA and Dr. Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The study aims to follow up 25 HIV-positive people who underwent a transplant of stem cells taken from umbilical cord blood to treat cancer and other serious diseases.
Patients in the trial undergo chemotherapy first to kill cancer cells. Doctors then transplant stem cells from individuals who have a specific genetic mutation who do not have the receptors that the virus uses to infect the cells.
Scientists believe that these people then develop an immune system that fights the HIV virus that causes HIV.
Lewin said bone marrow transplants are not a viable strategy for treating the majority of people infected with the virus. But she said the report “confirms that HIV treatment is feasible and is further enhanced by the use of gene therapy as a viable strategy to treat HIV.”
The study indicates that an important component of success is the transplantation of HIV-resistant cells.