Fourth patient cured of HIV

And he is also the oldest

Researchers at City of Hope Hospital in California have announced that a 66-year-old man has been cured of HIV, the fourth to be cured of the virus and the oldest of the three. The announcement took place at the International AIDS Conference in Canada.

This is the second patient treated this year, after a woman from New York in February. Like the previous patients from Berlin and London, the 66-year-old managed to achieve permanent remission from the virus, after a bone marrow transplant to treat the cancer. Of course, this development gives hope not only to AIDS sufferers but also to those who have the virus and at the same time have cancer.

When I was diagnosed with HIV in 1988, like many others, I thought it was a death sentence. I never thought I would live to see the day I no longer have HIV. I am more than grateful.

At one point he had advanced AIDS, but he was part of early trials of antiretroviral drugs, which today allow 38 million patients to live with the virus. He had HIV for 31 years, much longer than the other three who achieved remission. When he was diagnosed with leukemia in 2019, he received a bone marrow transplant with stem cells from a donor who had a rare mutation, missing part of the CCR5 gene, that makes people resistant to HIV. He waited to get vaccinated for COVID-19 in March 2021 to stop taking antiretroviral drugs and has been free of HIV and cancer ever since.

However, doctors warn that it is a complicated procedure with serious side effects and ” is not an appropriate option for most people with HIV “.

The first thing you do in a bone marrow transplant is to temporarily destroy the immune system. We would never have done this if he didn’t have cancer.

Cure remains the Holy Grail of HIV research. We have seen a few isolated cases and the one presented today offers hope for people living with HIV and inspiration for the scientific community.

Hope is dying of late, but it seems we are nowhere near the stage where a cure will be found.

I think if you get HIV down to very low levels and get rid of CCR5, the door that HIV comes in, then you can cure someone. It’s theoretically possible – we’re not there yet – to make a vaccine in the hand that will carry the enzyme that will go into the cells and get rid of CCR5 and defeat the virus. But that’s science fiction for now.