Healed from HIV: London patient is finally virus free

He is the second HIV patient worldwide who has been officially cured: Now the “London patient” speaks.

–
–

Stem cell therapy has worked successfully for a second time: After the so-called “Berlin patient”, an American living in Berlin, was officially the only person cured of the HI virus since 2011, he is now allowed to “London patient” officially HIV-free describe. He was no longer able to detect any HI viruses for 30 months. His doctors now officially describe him as cured in a scientific publication. Now he was giving up his identity.

“London patient” cured of HIV: this is Adam Castillejo

Adam Castillejo is 40 years old and was born in Venezuela. He has lived in London for almost 20 years – and that earned him the name “London patient”. Castillejo can now claim to be the second person cured of HIV after the “Berlin patient” Timothy Ray Brown about 2.5 years after the end of his anti-HIV therapy. This means: Even 30 months after his therapy, he is no longer able to detect a functional HI virus. This has now been officially reported by doctors and scientists around Ravindra Gupta from the University of Cambridge in Great Britain in the specialist magazine “The Lancet HIV”.

In 2003, when he was just 23 years old, the virus was discovered in Castillejo, and he was later diagnosed with blood cancer. The main goal of stem cell therapy was actually to defeat the cancer – but a mutation in the donor’s stem cells could ultimately free him of the HIV virus.

Stem cell therapy rebuilds the immune system – but is risky

The stem cell therapy has now had two positive effects. But researchers are still cautiously optimistic. Because the type of therapy is a high-risk treatment. The mortality rate is 10 percent, and most HIV patients do not want to take this risk, especially since the virus can now be very well suppressed with medication. AIDS itself is still not curable, the virus can only be held back with so-called antiretroviral drugs, so that the disease does not break out.

With stem cell therapy it is now the case that the immune system is rebuilt. This is possible thanks to stem cell donors who are immune to HI viruses through a rare mutation called Delta 32. The cells do not form a CCR5 receptor, which HI viruses usually need to dock with a cell to multiply. “Our results show that the success of stem cell transplantation as a cure for HIV, which was first reported in the Berlin patient nine years ago, can be repeated,” says Gupta. The patient from Berlin had also developed a form of blood cancer and had received stem cell therapy.

Doctors had also used the procedure in other patients, but it does not always work; a man from Essen had a relapse with a mutated virus strain. For most patients, high-risk treatment is out of the question, the doctors clarify. Therefore, the classic approach of keeping the virus at bay and suppressing the outbreak of AIDS in the long term is mostly used.

Healing rather means “no intact virus”

Due to the high risk, the therapy is mostly used in people who also suffer from another serious illness. Castillejo, too. In addition to HIV, he also suffered from blood cancer, against which he had previously received a stem cell donation. He now wants to be “an ambassador of hope”.

The researchers still found parts of the genetic makeup of HIV in fluid and tissue samples, but they suspect that they are “fossil” DNA strands and that the virus can no longer multiply, among other things because of the number of HIV-specific ones Antibodies had declined, indicating that the virus had disappeared from the patient’s body. Most of the viruses that survive anti-HIV therapy are defective and can no longer reproduce, the authors write. Therefore, the cure for HIV could rather be described as “no intact virus”.

Stem cell therapy is one of the most promising therapies against the HI virus, but is mostly used in cancer patients, especially in blood cancer such as leukemia. Another possibility could be to cut the virus out of the genome. There is also the drug “PrEP”, which can be used to protect healthy people from infection.

show description

show description

– .