Researchers from the USA have made a breakthrough in HIV treatment: Thanks to a special therapy, a sick woman is even said to have been cured twice.
New York – In the USA*, American doctors have apparently managed to heal a woman who was suffering from HIV and cancer. It is therefore one of only a few cases in which an HIV disease* could possibly be defeated with the help of a special therapy.
As the television station NBC reports, the research team relied on a state-of-the-art stem cell transplant method. Carl Dieffenbach, director of the Division of AIDS at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, explained that the accumulation of success in curing HIV gives reason for hope.
USA: Special stem cell therapy probably cures woman of HIV
In 2013 the woman was diagnosed with HIV and in 2017 with leukemia. The treatment finally took place in 2018 under the guidance of Dr. Yvonne J. Bryson, an infectious disease specialist at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.
A new method was used to cure the Latin American woman of HIV, and a total of ten research institutes and universities from the United States took part in the study. In contrast to previous attempts, a so-called “haplo/umbilical cord transplant” was carried out this time. This consists on the one hand of stem cells from a close relative of the patient and on the other hand of the umbilical cord of an infant.
The infant stem cells contained a naturally occurring but rare gene trait. This is able to make people resistant to the HI virus. This procedure led to success in treating the woman who was referred to as the “New York patient” because she received her therapy at a medial center in New York. To date, the virus has not reappeared. “The virus concentration in their blood was […] undetectable,” said researcher Yvonne J. Bryson when presenting the results at a conference. Her leukemia has also been in remission for more than four years.
HIV and cancer: Woman from the USA is said to be cured thanks to stem cell therapy
The research team involved has been trying for a long time to find optimal donors who have both cancer-healing and HIV-defeating stem cells. From a genetic point of view, people of northern European descent would be particularly suitable.
As early as 2009, scientists announced for the first time that a man suffering from HIV had possibly been cured by a transplant of HIV-resistant stem cells. He was known as the “Berlin patient”, but later died of cancer. Since then, the procedure has also been used in other treatments: A man from Düsseldorf is said to have been in HIV remission since his transplant in 2019, but is not yet considered completely cured.
The new case gives reason for hope, but is still a long way from standard therapy. “Bone marrow transplantation is not a viable mass-market cure for HIV,” Sharon Lewin, president of the International AIDS Society, told The Washington Post. However, it represents a milestone and shows that HIV can be cured. (Alina Schroeder)
A previously unknown HIV variant was only recently discovered in the Netherlands. *fr.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
List of rubrics: © Gregor Fischer/dpa
