Second Patient Reported Cured of HIV

Second Patient Reported Cured of HIV.

The second patient ever to be cleared of HIV infection signals that a cure is possible. Both patients were free of the virus that causes AIDS after a bone marrow stem cell transplant from a donor with a rare genetic mutation of the CCR5 gene. The first patient to experience this was a man from Berlin, Timothy Brown, who underwent the procedure over a decade ago. Brown stopped taking the antiretroviral drugs used to suppress HIV and has remained virus-free. The second man is an unnamed patient from London, who stopped his medication 18 months ago and has not shown any signs of the virus returning.
As bone marrow transplants aren’t a scalable solution to HIV, scientists are hoping that these are the first steps to “a safe, cost-effective and easy strategy to achieve these results using gene technology or antibody techniques.” Currently, a daily pill is needed to keep a person with HIV healthy and ensure a normal life span. An article published in Nature on March 5, 2019, details both how the stem cell treatment works and what the possibilities are for what comes next.