Seventh person likely to be 'cured' of HIV, doctors say

A 60-year-old German man may be the seventh person to be successfully cured of HIV after a stem cell transplant, doctors said Thursday.

The painful and dangerous procedure is for people with HIV and acute leukemia, so it’s not an option for nearly all of the nearly 40 million people living with the deadly virus around the world. .

The German man, who wished to remain anonymous, was dubbed "the next Berlin patient".

The original Berlin patient, Timothy Ray Brown, was the first person to be declared cured of HIV in 2008. Brown died of cancer in 2020.

The second man from Berlin was granted a permanent amnesty, it was announced ahead of the 25th World AIDS Conference in Munich, Germany.

He was first diagnosed with HIV in 2009, according to an interview at the conference.

The man received a bone marrow transplant for leukemia in 2015. This procedure, which has a 10 percent mortality rate, replaces a person’s immune system.

He then stopped taking antiretroviral drugs — which lower the amount of HIV in the blood — in late 2018.

Nearly six years later, he appears to be HIV- and cancer-free, medical researchers say.

Christian Gaebler, a doctor-researcher at Berlin’s Charite university hospital, who is treating the patient, told AFP that the team could not be "absolutely sure" that HIV symptoms had been eradicated.

But "the patient case is very indicative of an HIV cure," Gaebler added. "He is in good health and enthusiastic about participating in our research efforts."

’Promising' for wider treatment

The president of the International AIDS Society, Sharon Lewin, said that researchers hesitate to use the word "treatment" because it is not clear how long they should follow such cases.

But more than five years in remission means the man is "closer" to recovery, he told a press conference.

There is a significant difference between the man’s case and other HIV patients who have achieved long-term remission, he said.

All but one of the other patients received cells from a donor with a rare mutation in which part of the CCR5 gene is missing, preventing HIV from entering the host’s cells. his body.

These donors inherited two copies of the mutated CCR5 gene – one from each parent – making them "unsafe" for HIV, Lewin said.

But the new Berlin patient is the first to receive cells from a donor who inherited only one copy of the mutated gene.

About 15 percent of people of European descent have one copy of the mutation, compared to one percent for two.

Researchers hope that the latest success will mean a larger donor pool in the future.

The new case is also "promising" for more research into HIV treatments that work for all patients, Lewin said.

That’s "because it says you don’t have to knock out every single part of CCR5 for gene therapy to work," he added.

The Geneva patient, who was announced at the AIDS conference last year, is another of the seven. He received a transplant from a donor without the CCR5 mutation — but still went into long-term remission.

This showed that the effectiveness of the approach was not limited to CCR5, Lewin said.

© 2024 AFP