Doctors said on Thursday that a 60-year-old German man is probably the seventh person to have been successfully cured of HIV by stem cell transplantation.
Nearly all of the approximately 40 million people living with the deadly virus worldwide are not eligible for painful and dangerous surgery because it is just for those who have both HIV and severe leukemia.
The German man was referred to as the "next Berlin patient" and sought to stay nameless.
In 2008, Timothy Ray Brown, the initial patient from Berlin, became the first person to be officially certified HIV-cured. In 2020, Brown passed away from cancer.
Ahead of this week's 25th International AIDS Conference in Munich, Germany, the second man from Berlin to attain long-term HIV remission was revealed.
The research abstract that is being presented at the conference states that he was initially diagnosed with HIV in 2009.
In 2015, the man underwent a bone marrow transplant to treat his leukemia. The process effectively replaces a person's immune system; there is a 10% chance of death.
Then, in late 2018, he stopped taking anti-retroviral medications, which lowered the level of HIV in the blood.
He seems to be HIV- and cancer-free now, over six years later, according to the medical researchers.
"Promising" A Broader Treatment
Researchers are hesitant to use the phrase "cure" because it is unclear how long they need to follow up on such instances, according to International AIDS Society President Sharon Lewin.
However, she stated at a press conference that the man "would be close" to being deemed cured after more than five years in remission.
She noted that the man's situation differs significantly from those of the other HIV patients who have achieved long-term remission.
All but one of the other patients received stem cells from donors who had an uncommon mutation that prevented HIV from entering their body's cells by missing a portion of their CCR5 gene.
These donors were "essentially immune" to HIV because they possessed two copies of the mutant CCR5 gene, one from each parent, according to Lewin.
However, the newly diagnosed patient in Berlin is the first to get stem cells from a donor who only possessed one copy of the mutated gene.
One mutant copy affects 15% of individuals of European descent, while 1% have both.
With this latest result, researchers seek to expand the pool of possible donors in the future.
According to Lewin, this new case is also "promising" for the broader search for an HIV treatment that benefits every patient. This is important "because it suggests that you don't actually have to get rid of every single piece of CCR5 for gene therapy to work," she stated.
The only exception among the seven is the patient from Geneva, whose case was disclosed at the AIDS conference last year. He was able to establish long-term remission even after receiving a transplant from a donor who did not carry any CCR5 mutations. It was stated that this shows the CCR5 gene was not the sole factor contributing to the effectiveness of the procedure.
(Input from various sources)
(Rehash/Priyanka Pandey/MSM)