She is believed to be the third person and the first woman to be cured of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
She has been free of the virus for 14 months.
This is a patient in the United States who was undergoing treatment for leukemia when you received a stem cell transplant from someone who had a natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS.
But experts warn that the transplant method used, which required blood taken from an umbilical cord, is too dangerous to be used with most people with HIV.
This patient’s case was presented at a medical conference in Denver on Tuesday. To our knowledge, this is the first time that this method has been used as a functional cure for HIV.
The patient received an umbilical cord blood transplant as part of her cancer treatment and, since then, has not needed to receive antiretroviral therapy to treat HIV.
The case was part of a largest study in the United States of people living with HIV who had received the same type of blood transplant to treat cancer and serious illness.
The transplanted cells that were selected have a genetic mutation specific, which means that they cannot be infected by the HIV virus.
Scientists believe that, as a result, the immune system of recipients may develop resistance to HIV.
The challenge of removing the virus
Analysis by James Gallagher, Health and Science correspondent for the BBC
All the stories of HIV cures are genuinely remarkable and cause for celebration: they prove that it can be achieved.
But this approach does not bring us any closer to a cure for 37 million people living with HIV, the majority of whom reside in sub-Saharan Africa.
The potential of stem cell transplants was demonstrated in 2007 when Timothy Ray Brown was the first person to be “cured” of HIV. He had a transplant from a donor who was naturally resistant to HIV.
Since then, the feat has been repeated only twice, with Adam Castillejo and now with the patient from New York.
All three had cancer and needed a stem cell transplant to save their lives. Curing your HIV was never the main goal and therapy is too risky to use on everyone with HIV.
Remember: antiretroviral therapy gives people with HIV an almost normal life expectancy.
The main hopes for a cure continue to focus on vaccines or drugs that can eliminate the virus from the body.
The woman’s treatment involved the use of umbilical cord blood, unlike the two previous known cases in which patients had received adult stem cells as part of bone marrow transplants.
Umbilical cord blood is more widely available than previously used adult stem cells and does not require as close a match between donor and recipient.
Sharon Lewin, President-elect of the International Si Society da, warned that the transplant method used in this case would not be a viable cure for most people living with HIV.
But added that the case “confirms that a cure is possible for HIV and further strengthens the use of gene therapy as a viable strategy for the cure of HIV”.
The findings around this case study have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, so the broader understanding of it is still limited.
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