Jakarta –
A 66-year-old man declared ‘cured’ of HIV. Researchers announced the results of their treatment as of Wednesday (27/7). The recovery of the elderly patient has a record, namely in the process of procedure or therapy. It is considered dangerous for patients who are also battling cancer.
The elderly with the nickname ‘City of Hope’ is the second patient to be declared cured this year, after researchers previously revealed that a US woman nicknamed the patient ‘New York’ also showed signs of recovery.
The City of Hope patient, like previous Berlin and London patients, is in ‘long-term remission’ after undergoing bone marrow transplants. Another patient, previously also said to have reached ‘remission’, could potentially bring the world’s HIV-free patients to five.
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Jana Dickter, an infectious disease specialist at the City of Hope in California, said the success of the procedure on a 66-year-old patient could hold promise for older people with HIV.
‘City of Hope’ Patient Talks
“When I was diagnosed with HIV in 1988, like many others, I thought it was a death sentence,” said the patient, who asked not to be named.
“I never thought I would live to see the day I would no longer have HIV,” he said in a City of Hope statement. “I am very grateful.”
Dickter said patients had told him about the stigma he endured during the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.
“He saw many of his friends and loved ones get very sick and eventually succumb to the disease,” he said.
He had ‘full AIDS’ for a time, but was part of an early trial of antiretroviral therapy, which now enables many of the 38 million people with HIV globally to live with HIV.
He had been living with HIV for 31 years, longer than the previous patient who was in ‘remission’.
After being diagnosed with leukemia last 2019, he received a bone marrow transplant with stem cells from an unrelated donor with a rare mutation, part of the CCR5 gene is missing, making people immune to HIV. He waited until being vaccinated against COVID-19 in March 2021 to stop taking antiretrovirals, and has been in remission from HIV and cancer since then.
“Chemotherapy at lower intensity works for patients, potentially allowing older HIV patients with cancer to get treatment,” Dickter said.
“But it is a complex procedure with serious side effects and is “not a suitable option for most people with HIV,” he added.
Steven Deeks, an HIV expert at the University of California, San Francisco who was not involved in the study, said the first thing a bone marrow transplant does is for the patient to destroy his own immune system temporarily.
“You would never do this if you didn’t have cancer,” he told AFP.
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