A 53-year-old man in Germany became the third person with HIV to be declared free of the virus after a procedure that replaced his bone marrow cells with HIV-resistant stem cells from a donor.
This is the "Düsseldorf patient" , who stopped taking antiretroviral therapy (ART) in 2018 and since then has maintained undetectable viral loads. Previously, he had received a stem cell transplant to treat leukemia.
For years, ART has been given to people with HIV with the goal of reducing the virus to undetectable levels and preventing it from being transmitted to others. But the immune system keeps the virus locked in reservoirs in the body, and if a person stops taking antiretrovirals, the virus can begin to replicate and spread. A true cure would eliminate this reservoir, and this is what appears to have happened with the latest patient, whose name has not been made public.
This was shown by the scientific study published in the journal Nature Medicine , which found that traces of viral particles in the man who, after receiving a stem cell transplant to treat leukemia, supervisedly interrupted antiretroviral treatment and, four years Afterwards, it remains virus-free in the body.
The work was carried out by the international consortium IciStem, coordinated by the IrsiCaixa AIDS Research Institute, a center promoted jointly by the La Caixa Foundation and the Department of Health of the Generalitat of Catalonia, in collaboration with the University Medical Center of Utrecht (Countries Low).
According to the article, the absence of viral particles and an immune response against the virus could be confirmed in the body of the patient from the German city of Düsseldorf, despite not receiving treatment for four years, evidence that allows the scientific team to consider that it is of a new case of cure.
Javier Martínez-Picado, researcher at IrsiCaixa and co-author of the article, said that they have been "studying these exceptional cases for nine years in which, thanks to a therapeutic strategy, the virus is completely eliminated from the body."
It should be noted that this technique was first used to treat Timothy Ray Brown, often known as “the Berlin patient,” who was implanted with stem cells to treat acute myeloid leukemia. The team then selected a donor with a genetic mutation called CCR5Δ32/Δ32, which prevents the cell surface protein CCR5 from being expressed on the cell surface. HIV uses that protein to enter immune cells, so the mutation makes the cells effectively resistant to the virus. After the procedure, Brown was able to stop taking ART and remained HIV-free until his death in 2020.
In 2019, researchers revealed that the same procedure appeared to have cured London patient Adam Castillejo. And, in 2022, scientists announced that they thought a New York patient who had remained HIV-free for 14 months could also be cured, although researchers cautioned that it was too early to be sure.
The history of the new case
In 2008, a medical team in Düsseldorf diagnosed HIV infection in a person who later became known as "the Düsseldorf patient" because of his uniqueness.
After the diagnosis, the patient began antiretroviral treatment, which allowed him to control the infection and reduce the amount of virus to undetectable levels in the blood. But four years later, in 2012, he suffered leukemia for which he had to undergo a stem cell transplant.
When he stopped taking antiretroviral treatment, he was followed for 44 months and no trace of the virus was detected in the patient’s body. More than five years after the transplant, and having gone through two relapses of leukemia and several complications, the patient stabilized, after which the research team agreed to withdraw antiretroviral treatment against HIV. Today the patient is 53 years old and is in good health.
