HIV: a person potentially cured thanks to a new treatment

An American would be the first woman and the third person to be cured of HIV. Diagnosed in 2013, she discovered 4 years later that she also suffered from leukemia, a cancer that originates in cells of the bone marrow. To treat the two diseases, she received a stem cell transplant from umbilical cord blood from a donor naturally resistant to the virus that causes AIDS, informs the washington post February 15. His case was presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Denver, USA.

Since the mixed-race, “middle-aged” woman received the cord blood, she has been in remission and HIV-free for 14 months. Period during which she did not need to have recourse to antiretroviral treatment. “[Ce sang] comes from a partially matched donor and not from a donor of similar ethnicity to the patient, as is usually the case”inform the New York Times.

An encouraging advance in the treatment of HIV?

According to the authors of the study, this would “providing hope for the use of cord blood cells to achieve HIV remission in people requiring transplants for other illnesses” says Yvonne J. Bryson, a physician specializing in infectious diseases. “A bone marrow transplant is not a viable large-scale strategy to cure HIV, but it presents proof of concept that HIV can be cured. It also reinforces the use of gene therapy as a viable strategy to cure HIV” said Sharon Lewin, president of the International AIDS Society.

Two people have already been cured of HIV by having received HIV-resistant stem cells through a bone marrow transplant. The first time in 2009 was a man nicknamed the patient from Berlin: he died due to a recurrence of his leukemia which was thought to be eliminated thanks to the transplant. A second man, nicknamed the London patient, was also able to recover from this technique.