UK patient 'free' of HIV after stem cell treatment


A UK patient's HIV has become "undetectable" following a stem cell transplant - in only the second case of its kind, doctors report in Nature.

The male patient, who has not been named, was diagnosed with HIV in 2003 and advanced Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2012. He had chemotherapy to treat the Hodgkin's cancer and, in addition, stem cells were implanted into the patient from a donor resistant to HIV, leading to both his cancer and HIV going into remission. He also remained in remission for 18 months after he stopped taking antiretroviral drugs.

Ten years ago, something similar happened to Timothy Brown, "the first person to beat HIV/Aids," after he was given transplant from a donor with natural immunity to HIV and total body irradiation (radiotherapy) for leukemia.

The stem cell transplants donors in both cases carried a rare genetic mutation, known as CCR5-delta 32, that made them resistant to HIV. 

"By achieving remission in a second patient using a similar approach, we have shown that the Berlin patient was not an anomaly and that it really was the treatment approaches that eliminated HIV in these two people," said lead study author Prof Ravindra Gupta, from UCL



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