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Dr Gérald Kierzek (Medical Director of Doctissimo)
It is the fourth or fifth case in the world, according to counts: a 66-year-old man has just been declared to be completely cured of HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus, which leads to the disease AIDS in after a few years. If this kind of news gives hope, it does not allow to consider a treatment allowing to eradicate the virus.
Curing HIV infection, impossible? Yet this is what just happened to a man, who wished to remain anonymous. “I never imagined I would live long enough to be HIV free” is it simply expressed through a california hospital statement where he was treated and where his official recovery was announced on July 27.
Normal life expectancy thanks to treatments
Cases of HIV cure are extremely rare. However, the vast majority of people affected by the virus, when they are lucky enough to have access to treatment on a regular basis, can reach a normal life expectancy.
In these people, antiretrovirals block the reproduction of the virus in the body and maintain it at almost undetectable levels, but we cannot speak of a cure for these patients. Unlike the few exceptional cases of healing, the first of which took place in Berlin in 2008 and the most recent in the United States.
Stem cell transplant
But how were these patients able to recover? In reality, they all have one thing in common: they were affected by blood cancer. To treat them, they therefore benefited from a stem cell transplant. It was this treatment, and the in-depth renewal of their immune system, that enabled them to recover. Their donor had a rare gene mutation, the CCR5 gene. A characteristic that prevents HIV from entering cells and therefore makes people who carry it naturally resistant to infection. This characteristic is more common in Europeans, especially in the North, than in the rest of the world’s population.
A treatment path for the future?
However, this treatment cannot be applied to all patients because it requires the suppression of the patient’s immune system, a procedure that puts him in danger of death. It is therefore out of the question to apply it outside the context of leukemia.
However, according to Dr Gérald Kierzek, emergency doctor and medical director of Doctissimo “this may represent an interesting lead, which may perhaps lead to a treatment one day”. He also wishes to recall that “HIV is a chronic disease that cannot be cured and whose transmission is avoided by wearing a condom..