AIDS: woman recovers from HIV without treatment

An Argentinian woman nicknamed “Esperanza’s patient” is said to have recovered from HIV without having resorted to any medical treatment. This is surprising news reported in an article in the Annals of Internal Medicine on November 16, 2021 and this is the second such case. Scientists explain that she was diagnosed with HIV in 2013 and has been closely monitored since 2017.

The researchers looked at the 30-something’s blood cells as well as her placenta after giving birth. Scientists found that there was no trace of the virus: “No genome-intact HIV-1 proviruses were detected in the analysis of a total of 1.188 billion peripheral blood mononuclear cells and 503 million placental tissue mononuclear cells”, can we read in the document. The healing process would therefore result from the patient’s immune system, which would have suppressed the virus.

4 people “cured” of HIV

4 people have been identified as cured of HIV. The first is the “Berlin patient”, Timothy Ray Brown, who had received a hematopoietic stem cell transplant in an attempt to cure his HIV and leukemia. He then became the first person to be cured of HIV thanks to a rare genetic mutation carried by the donor, CCR5, which is said to have some resistance to the disease. He died of leukemia which had recurred in 2020. A second person nicknamed “the London patient” is also believed to be cured of HIV after receiving a bone marrow transplant.

A third person, the first whose healing is natural, has been listed. This is “the patient from San Francisco,” a 67-year-old Californian whose body cleared the virus on its own. Like the thirty-something living in Argentina, they are what the scientific community calls “elite controllers”: their immune system has naturally suppressed traces of the human immunodeficiency virus. More research is needed to learn more about these very rare phenomena.