HIV. Düsseldorf patient treated with ‘high-risk’ method

Scientists on the effective treatment of a 53-year-old anonymous man, nicknamed “the patient from Düsseldorf”, first reported in 2019. At that time, however, it was too early to say how permanent the effects of the therapy would be. However, new details of the treatment were presented by the researchers on February 21 in the journal Nature.

They reported that the body of the “patient from Düsseldorf” still does not have HIV, despite the fact that with antiretroviral (ARV) treatment resigned four years ago. “It’s really a cure, not just a long-term remission,” said Dr Björn-Erik Ole Jensen, one of the authors of the paper.

SEE ALSO: Do we need more sleep in winter? New research

The patient from Düsseldorf thus joined the group of only a few people who have been cured of HIV. This was achieved by replacing the bone marrow cells with HIV-resistant stem cells from a donor. These types of transplants are usually performed to treat leukemia, but in a few cases the procedure has also resulted in a cure for HIV.

However, experts acknowledge that bone marrow transplantation is unlikely to be widely used to treat HIV. They believe so because of the “high risk associated with the procedure, in particular the likelihood that the person will reject the donor’s marrow,” we read in Nature.

The patient from Düsseldorf is – according to various estimates – the third or fifth person to be cured of HIV. Specialists are not unanimous in their assessment of some cases of treatment. Timothy Ray Brown was the first person in the world to be cured of HIV. In 2007, after being diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, he received powerful chemotherapy that destroyed the cancer cells that were forming in the bone marrow. He was then transplanted with bone marrow obtained from a donor with the CCR5 mutation, which confers immunity to HIV. As a result of this treatment, Brown remained virus-free until his own death in 2020.

In 2019, scientists reported that the same procedure helped cure “London patient” Adam Castillejo of HIV. In 2022, it was announced that a New York patient who had been virus-free for 14 months could also be cured. However, the researchers noted that it is too early to be sure. In the same 2022, the world media also reported the fourth case of a man from California cured of HIV. “When I was diagnosed with HIV in 1988, like many others, I thought it was a death sentence,” he said in a statement quoted by the BBC. However, this case is not always covered by the media.

Currently, there are approximately 38 million people living with HIV around the world. The spread of antiretroviral therapy has contributed to a decrease in the mortality rate of people suffering from AIDS, a disease caused by HIV – the human immunodeficiency virus. However, according to the World Health Organization, HIV continues to be a serious public health problem, as it has claimed 40.1 million lives so far.

SEE ALSO: The detection rate of HIV infection has decreased significantly. Fewer people are tested