A US 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, said a Reuters report quoting researchers.
The case of a middle-aged woman of mixed race, identified as 'New York patient' after she was treated at the New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City, was presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunisitic Infections in Denver, Colo.
There are around 40 million HIV-infected people around the world and majority of them survive on antiretroviral drugs that keep the virus in check. Bone marrow transplant is not a preferred method as it is risky.
More women are HIV-infected than men and the stem cell transplant method has kindled hope for finding a cure for the HIV.
Diagnosed with HIV in 2013 and leukemia in 2017, she received cord blood from a partially matched donor as a treatment for both diseases. The treatment is a combination of half-match stem cells from a related donor and cord blood stem cells. The blood received from her close relative would give her temporary immunity.
Following the transplant, she discontinued taking antiretroviral drugs that kept her her HIV in check. Researchers found that the level of virus in her blood was "undetectable" that there was no signs of HIV infections in her body and is free of the virus for 14 months.
“This provides hope for the use of cord blood cells … to achieve HIV remission for individuals requiring transplant for other diseases,” Bryson said. “This provides additional proof that HIV reservoirs can be cleared sufficiently to afford remission and cure.”
"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 researchers in a statement.
The previous cases are of two males—one white and one Latino—who had received bone marrow transplants from donors. They received adult stem cells, which are more frequently used in bone marrow transplants. In both cases the patients had to suffer severe side effects as the bone marrow transplants replaced all of their immune systems.
“This is critical science to eventually get us to a cure,” said Carlos del Rio, professor of medicine at Emory University School of Medicine told The Washington Post.