First, Berlin; now London. In 2016, the so-called London patient, an HIV carrier and with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, underwent a stem cell transplant treatment with a mutation, CCR5 Delta 32, which prevents the entry of the virus into HIV cells, lymphocytes T CD4. 18 months after stopping the treatment, the scientists considered this patient free of HIV, the second in the world after the Berlin patient. This case was a true milestone in the fight against HIV; But, at that time, they did not risk calling it a ‘cure’ but simply an undetectable case.
Now, 29 months after stopping treatment, the virus remains undetectable “in blood, cerebrospinal fluid, intestinal tissue and semen,” as published in The Lancet HIV journal. As with the Berlin patient, the London patient tests show very low levels of the HIV genome in lymphoid tissues. This genetic material is now something like a ‘fossil’ of the DNA of the virus, since it does not have infectious capacity or replicative capacity. This is what has led researchers to consider the London patient the second ‘officially cured’ person of HIV.
“When the London case was initially published we insisted on not talking about a cure because, although 18 months invited a lot of optimism because such a long interval had not been seen since the Berlin patient, we wanted to be prudent and not generate false expectations,” he says Javier Martínez-Picado, ICREA researcher at IrsiCaixa and co-coordinator of IciStem, in statements to the SINC Agency. ” The results of their analyzes led us to conclude that this is a second case of cure because the patient from Berlin also detected fossil remains of viral DNA without infectious capacity ,” he adds.
When people with HIV infection stop treatment, the virus usually rebounds only 4 weeks later. However, this stem cell-based treatment renders the cells resistant to HIV; therefore, as the cells are replaced by this transplant, the chances of infection decrease, and it ends up disappearing.
However, the continued presence of the virus in the body, even if we only talk about inactive traces, is normal, given that antibodies can take years to disappear, as María Salgado, a researcher at IrsiCaixa explains: “It is common for the body to there is evidence of a past infection ”.
Third case undetectable, and second case cured
The London patient is the second case officially considered cured of HIV in the world, and the third case previously labeled as undetectable.
Besides the Berlin patient (the first cured), the other undetectable case is the so-called Dusseldorf patient, a 50-year-old man who received a stem cell transplant treatment in February 2013; treatment interruption occurred in November 2018 and, fourteen months later, continues without viral rebound.
Given the good results of this therapy, it is expected that the Dusseldorf patient will become the third patient officially cured of HIV.
The first time that AIDS patients were detected was in 1981 and it took more than two years to identify the causative virus. Decades of research and the fight against HIV later bring magnificent news like this, which these days is overshadowed by the social crisis caused by the new coronavirus epidemic.
