Author: Aimee Cunningham / Source: Science News
For only the second time in recorded medical history, a man’s HIV infection has gone into remission.
The patient — positive for the virus that causes AIDS since 2003 — had received a blood stem cell transplant in 2016 as treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system.
The blood stem cells came from a donor with a mutation that makes cells resistant to an HIV infection.Subsequent testing over 12 months showed the patient’s HIV had fallen to undetectable levels. So 16 months after the procedure, the patient stopped taking antiretroviral medication under medical supervision. He has remained in remission ever since, with HIV levels measuring less than one copy per milliliter of plasma, researchers report online in Nature March 5.
Although it’s too early to call the patient cured, “it’s pointing in that direction,” says coauthor Ravindra Gupta, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Cambridge.
Nearly 37 million people worldwide were living with HIV in 2017, with 1.8 million people newly infected that year, according to UNAIDS. Antiretroviral therapy, or ART, has helped many patients live longer by reducing virus levels in the blood, but the drugs need to be taken for life.
During an HIV infection, the virus ambushes immune cells called T cells and makes copies of itself. To enter the T cell, HIV first binds to…
The post A second HIV patient has gone into remission after a stem cell transplant appeared first on FeedBox.