Hope for a cure for HIV

There is stronger hope for a cure for HIV now with the successful treatment of a man in London suffering from HIV AIDS through stem cell transplant. It is the second time such a line of treatment has yielded positive results. A person who was known as the ‘Berlin patient’ but was later identified as Timothy Brown has been free of HIV since 2007, when he underwent bone marrow transplant to treat his acute myeloid leukemia. It has now been disclosed that another patient, known only as the ‘London patient’, has been in remission without medication for 18 months after his transplantation for advanced Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In both cases, the patients were not receptive to any other treatment, such as chemotherapy. The stem cell transplant replaced their white blood cells with HIV-resistant cells and created a protective and defensive line. The defence was built into the body without the use of medicines.

The transplanted stem cells were from a donor who had a mutation of a gene which confers resistance to HIV. The treatment worked in the case of both patients and may work for many others, given some favourable circumstances. But the gene mutation itself is not very common and is found only among North Europeans. Even among them, less than 1% of the population inherit the gene. It is not generally found among people from Asia, Africa and the Americas.

The doctors who undertook the treatment have said that by achieving remission in a second patient using a similar approach, it has been shown that the Berlin patient was not an anomaly, and that it was the treatment that eliminated HIV in the two people. It has been noted that it is not technically correct to say that both patients have been “cured’’ because remission does not always show a disease has been permanently cured. Remissions are sometimes not complete, and the virus may come back. But in the two cases from Berlin and London, the long remission is considered to mean cure. That is why it is taken to be a breakthrough. At the moment, the treatment through stem cell replantation method is very expensive and most people will not be able to afford it. But doctors have taken it to be a hugely promising step. Further research can open up new lines of treatment and eventual cure. Research on HIV has made considerable progress in the last few decades. The disease has killed around 45 million people since the 1980s, and some 37 million people are thought to be infected at present. Eliminating the disease is among the major health challenges of the world.