Bone marrow transplantation is not a viable option for most patients. Such transplants are invasive and high risk and are usually offered only to cancer patients who have exhausted all other options.
So far, there are only two known cases of HIV treatment. Timothy Ray Brown, dubbed a “patient in Berlin,” said she hadn’t been infected with the virus for 12 years until she died of her cancer in 2020. 2019, another patient, Identified later It was confirmed that Mr Brown’s case was not a fluke, as Adam Castillejo was reported to have cured HIV.
Both men received a bone marrow transplant from a donor with a mutation that blocks HIV infection. Mutations have only been confirmed in about 20,000 donors, most of them of Scandinavian descent.
In previous cases, bone marrow transplants replaced the entire immune system, so both men suffered from punishing side effects such as graft-versus-host disease and a condition in which donor cells attack the recipient’s body. Mr Brown almost died after the transplant.Castillejo’s treatment wasn’t that intense, but that year After his transplantAccording to doctors, he lost nearly 70 pounds, developed deafness and survived multiple infections.
In contrast, the female in the latest case was discharged by 17 days after transplantation and did not develop graft-versus-host disease, said Dr. Jing Mei Hsu, a patient doctor at Weill Cornell Medicine. The combination of her cord blood and the cells of her relatives may have spared her many of the brutal side effects of a typical bone marrow transplant, Dr. Sue said.
“In previous cases, it was previously thought that graft-versus-host disease could be an important reason for HIV treatment,” said Elect, president of the International AIDS Society, who was not involved in the study. Dr. Sharon Lewin said. The new results dispel that idea, Dr. Lewin said.
Women who are now over middle age (who did not want to reveal the exact age due to privacy concerns) Diagnosed with HIV in June 2013.. Her antiretroviral drug kept her virus levels low. In March 2017, she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.
