A study published Monday (20) in the journal Nature Medicine reported that a fifth patient with HIV was cured after a stem cell transplant and that no trace of the AIDS virus remains in his body.
Before the case of this “patient from Düsseldorf” (West Germany), a 53-year-old man, four other HIV patients managed to be cured. The first of them was from Berlin, in 2009; the second, from London, in 2019; the third was a woman, in 2022; and the fourth, a 66-year-old man, also in 2022.
According to the international consortium IciStem, this fifth patient had received a stem cell transplant as part of the treatment for leukemia.
After this operation, he managed to stop the treatment he was taking against HIV.
In the analyzes carried out, no traces of viral particles or viral reserves were found, nor an immune response against the virus.
The five patients who achieved a definitive cure for Aids have the same point in common: they all suffered from blood cancer and, therefore, were treated with a stem cell transplant, which profoundly renewed their immune system.
In all five cases, the donor had a rare mutation in the CCR5 gene, a genetic alteration that prevents HIV from entering cells.
“During a bone marrow transplant, the patient’s immune cells are completely replaced by donor cells, which makes it possible to eliminate most of the infected cells”, explains virologist Asier Sáez-Cirion, one of the authors, in a statement.
“This is an exceptional situation when all these factors coincide for this transplant to be a double success, both for the cure of leukemia and for HIV”, he adds.
As less than 1% of the population normally benefits from the protective HIV gene mutation, few stem cell donors carry it.
Although these cases give scientists hope of finding a cure for AIDS, stem cell transplantation is a risky treatment and not adapted to the situation of most patients with HIV.
It is worth remembering that the first case, that of the so-called “Berlin patient”, remained cured for 12 years – until he died of leukemia in September 2020. The second, called the “London patient”, has been in HIV remission for more than 35 months. The last healed, the 66-year-old man (at the time), was the oldest to receive a stem cell transplant.
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