Scientists Report a Second Person Has Been Cured of HIV

Scientists have reported that an HIV-positive man in Britain has been cleared of the AIDS virus after he received a bone marrow transplant from an HIV resistant donor. This is the second known adult worldwide to be cleared of HIV; the first was an American man, Timothy Brown, who became known as the Berlin patient when he underwent similar treatment in Germany more than a decade ago. According to HIV experts, Brown is still HIV-free. Reuters reports: Almost three years after receiving bone marrow stem cells from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that resists HIV infection - and more than 18 months after coming off antiretroviral drugs - highly sensitive tests still show no trace of the man's previous HIV infection. The case is a proof of the concept that scientists will one day be able to end AIDS, the doctors said, but does not mean a cure for HIV has been found. The man is being called 'the London patient,' in part because his case is similar to the first known case of a functional cure of HIV.

'There is no virus there that we can measure. We can't detect anything,' said Ravindra Gupta, a professor and HIV biologist who co-led a team of doctors treating the man. Gupta described his patient as 'functionally cured' and 'in remission,' but cautioned: 'It's too early to say he's cured.' Gupta, now at Cambridge University, treated the London patient when he was working at University College London. The man had contracted HIV in 2003, Gupta said, and in 2012 was also diagnosed with a type of blood cancer called Hodgkin's Lymphoma. In 2016, when he was very sick with cancer, doctors decided to seek a transplant match for him. 'This was really his last chance of survival,' Gupta told Reuters in an interview. The donor -- who was unrelated -- had a genetic mutation known as 'CCR5 delta 32,' which confers resistance to HIV. The transplant went relatively smoothly, Gupta said, but there were some side effects, including the patient suffering a period of 'graft-versus-host' disease - a condition in which donor immune cells attack the recipient's immune cells.

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