Fourth patient cured of HIV  

By stem cell transplant

After a decade of treatments, a German HIV patient was completely cured of the virus thanks to a risky stem cell transplant. The so-called “Düsseldorf patient” was diagnosed with HIV in 2008 and began treatment with antiretroviral drugs in 2010. The following year he was diagnosed with leukemia. Given the dangerous combination of the middle-aged man’s illnesses, his doctors decided to take a risky route.

In 2013 the patient underwent a stem cell transplant, a procedure where stem cells from the donor’s bone marrow replace the patient’s white blood cells. In this particular case, this risky course of action was chosen because the donor had a unique genetic mutation that made him resistant to HIV. The doctors’ goal was to cure the leukemia while giving the patient a genetic basis resistant to HIV.

So nine years after the initial treatment and four years after stopping treatment, the researchers announced that the patient has no traces of active, replicating HIV cells in his body, and is now “cured.”

Although there is no clear line between someone cured and sick, the Dusseldorf patient is the fourth in the world to receive stem cells for treatment, and doctors are optimistic that all traces of HIV genes have disappeared from his body.

The term “cure” is in quotation marks because HIV is one of the most difficult viruses to fight. It has the ability to remain inactive in the body, undetected by the immune system.

Stem cell treatments can make the immune system resistant to the virus, but they can also be fatal because they don’t always work and are only used as a last line of defense in extreme cases.

There are also some cases where they managed to keep the virus inactive even after stopping taking drugs, without the need for a stem cell transplant. The reason is not yet clear, but there are several clinical trials that point the way to a treatment in the future.

The study was published in Nature Medicine .