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Second patient ever cured of HIV

Special news from London. A patient has been cured of HIV after a stem cell transplant. It is the second time that a patient has recovered from the HIV virus.

11 years ago Timothy healed Ray Brown, then known as ‘the Berlin patient’. It was then expected that another such case would be nearly impossible.

Stem cell transplantation

Brown was a leukemia patient at the time and as a last resort underwent a stem cell transplant. He was transplanted into a cell from someone who was missing the CCR5 gene. That gene causes the HIV virus to spread in the body and caused the virus to disappear from Brown. The same treatment has now been successfully applied to the patient in London.

Pieter Brokx is director of the HIV Vereniging Nederland. The news that Timothy Ray Brown was cured of HIV in 2008 was big news, he says. “There is always great hope when there is such news. It was the first time that there was a possibility of a cure. But that hope was also tempered by the scientists, because it would take a long time to apply it to more people. used to be.”

Realism

Patients remained realistic. “It was such a unique method. Only 1 percent of people do not have the CCR5 gene and would therefore potentially be a good stem cell donor. The flush is thin and the treatment is very difficult.”

It is therefore not surprising that it took 10 years for a new successful treatment to come out. “It has been tried before,” says Brokx. “But then the virus came back anyway. It’s difficult to master it completely.”

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Radio interview: Pieter Brokx, director of the HIV Vereniging Nederland, responds to the cure of a second HIV patient.

A positive step

The news that comes out today is another positive step in the fight against HIV, says Brokx. “It confirms the important research. Other scientists can also learn a lot from this research.”

Nevertheless, we still have to wait for a real treatment for the HIV virus. “We do not expect this until 10 or 20 years from now. So people are delighted, but also understand that this is not yet the solution.”

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