Researchers announced Wednesday that a 66-year-old man is the oldest person yet to possibly be cured of HIV after undergoing a stem cell transplant.
The man had HIV for more than 31 years when he received a blood stem cell transplant in early 2019 for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) using cells from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that prevents HIV from entering human cells, making people who have it resistant to most strains of the virus.
The latest patient, the fourth to be cured in this way, is known as the “City of Hope” patient after the U.S. facility in Duarte, California, where he was treated because he does not want to be identified.
As well as being the oldest, the patient has also had HIV the longest, having been diagnosed in 1988 with what he described as a “death sentence” that killed many of his friends.
Describing a cure as the “holy grail”, Sharon Lewin, president-elect of the IAS, said the case provided “continued hope … and inspiration” for people with HIV and the wider scientific community, although it was unlikely to be an option for most people with HIV due to the risks of the procedure.
Scientists think the process works because the donor individual’s stem cells have a specific, rare genetic mutation which means they lack the receptors used by HIV to infect cells.
According to the Doctors, they found no signs of HIV in the man after he stopped antiretroviral therapy (ART) more than a year ago.
Jana Dickter, an infectious disease doctor who treated the patient, said:
“He saw many of his friends and loved ones become ill and ultimately succumb to the disease and had experienced some stigma associated with having HIV. His success “opens up the opportunity potentially for older patients to undergo this procedure and go into remission from both their blood cancer and HIV.”
More details of this amazing story from The Daily Wire:
A woman in Spain in her 70s, who was diagnosed at 59, also has showed promising signs of potentially beating the virus after she stopped antiretroviral therapy (ART) more than a decade ago.
The woman quickly received antiretroviral drugs for nine months after becoming infected with the disease, as well as other treatments to boost her body’s immune system, The Wall Street Journal reported. Researchers discovered that she has been able to keep the virus under control because her body “has high levels of two types of immune cells that the virus normally suppresses and that probably help control viral replication.”
Steven Deeks, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco who leads research for an HIV cure, said that new advances in medical technology could soon lead to cures for the disease that can be widely distributed.
“There are fancy new gene editing methods emerging that might one day be able to achieve a similar outcome with a shot in the arm,” he said.
Sources: TheDailyWire, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal