For the third time in history, an HIV-positive woman has been cured of AIDS. The patient was treated with a new type of stem cell transplant from umbilical cord blood.
- At the end of 2020, approximately 37.7 million people were living with HIV.
- Researchers have discovered the case of a third patient who seems to be cured of an HIV infection thanks to a transplant of stem cells from umbilical cord blood.
After patients in Berlin in 2011 and London in 2020, a third person in the world has managed to get rid of HIV. This was announced on February 15 by American scientists during the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Denver, Colorado (United States). The woman, treated in New York, benefited from an innovative treatment. She was transplanted with cells taken from the blood contained in the umbilical cord, according to the New York Times.
Two types of transplanted cells
The mixed-race woman was diagnosed with HIV in 2013. She took anti-retroviral treatment for HIV which helped keep her virus levels low. Four years later, the woman learned that she had leukemia. In August 2017, she received umbilical cord blood from a donor with the genetic mutation that blocks the entry of the AIDS virus into cells. According to the American daily, the blood came from a partially compatible donor and not from a donor of similar ethnicity to that of the patient, as is usually the case.
The “New York patient” also benefited from the blood of a close relative to provide her body with temporary immune defenses while the stem cells from the blood of the umbilical cord replace the others. “The transplant performed by the parent is like a bridge that allowed him to reach the point where the umbilical cord blood could take over”, explained Dr Marshall Glesby, an infectious disease expert at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York and a member of the research team.
No signs of HIV after transplant
The patient, in remission from her leukemia, stopped taking her antiretroviral treatments against HIV, 37 months after the stem cell transplant. the New York Times added that, more than 14 months later, his blood tests showed no trace of HIV or antibodies specific to the virus.
Experts said they weren’t sure why umbilical cord blood stem cells worked so well. “The umbilical stem cells are interesting. There is something magical about these cells and something magical maybe about the umbilical cord blood that provides an added benefit,” said Dr. Steven Deeks, an AIDS specialist at the University of California, San Francisco.
According to Dr. JingMei Hsu, the woman’s physician at Weill Cornell Medicine, the “New York patient” could be spared many of the brutal side effects of a typical bone marrow transplant, thanks to the combination of blood from the umbilical cord and its parent’s cells. The researchers estimated that this new approach could allow more people to be cured.
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