First Woman Cured Of HIV
After nearly 40 years, the end of HIV may finally be near. Via Reuters:
A U.S. patient with leukemia has become the first woman and the third person to date to be cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant from a donor who was naturally resistant to the virus that causes AIDS, researchers reported on Tuesday.
The case of a middle-aged woman of mixed race, presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Denver, is also the first involving umbilical cord blood, a newer approach that may make the treatment available to more people.
Since receiving the cord blood to treat her acute myeloid leukemia – a cancer that starts in blood-forming cells in the bone marrow – the woman has been in remission and free of the virus for 14 months, without the need for potent HIV treatments known as antiretroviral therapy.
The two prior cases occurred in males – one white and one Latino – who had received adult stem cells, which are more frequently used in bone marrow transplants.
“This is now the third report of a cure in this setting, and the first in a woman living with HIV,” Sharon Lewin, President-Elect of the International AIDS Society, said in a statement.
Lewin said bone marrow transplants are not a viable strategy to cure most people living with HIV. But the report “confirms that a cure for HIV is possible and further strengthens using gene therapy as a viable strategy for an HIV cure,” she said.
The study suggests that an important element to the success is the transplantation of HIV-resistant cells.
[Reuters: First woman reported cured of HIV after stem cell transplant]
