Announcing the recovery of the fourth patient in the world from AIDS

 Yesterday, AIDS researchers announced that a fourth person has recovered from HIV, after receiving a stem cell transplant for leukemia.

The 66-year-old man, who was named the "City of Hope" patient after the City of Hope Hospital in California, was receiving treatment in the run-up to the International AIDS Conference, which begins in Montreal on Friday.

The man is now in recovery from both leukemia and HIV since 17 months after stopping his antiretroviral therapy (ART) after a leukemia stem cell transplant.

He is the second patient whose recovery is announced this year, after researchers said last February that an American woman called the "New York patient" had also recovered from the virus.

The "City of Hope" patient, like the patients in Berlin and London before him, has always recovered from the virus after a bone marrow transplant to treat cancer.

The City of Hope patient received the transplant nearly three and a half years ago, and is older than the three previous HIV-positive patients who recovered after receiving stem cell therapy for leukemia.

Jana Decker, an infectious disease specialist at City of Hope Hospital and lead author of the patient's research, which was announced at a previous conference in Montreal but has not been peer-reviewed, told AFP that since the last patient If it is the oldest so far, its success may be promising for older patients with HIV and with cancer.

"When I was diagnosed with HIV in 1988, like many others, I thought it was a death sentence," said the patient, who asked not to be identified.

In a statement to City of Hope, he revealed, "I never imagined that I would live to see the day when I was no longer infected with HIV. I am so grateful."

"He saw many of his friends die of AIDS in the early days of the disease and faced a lot of stigma when he was diagnosed with HIV in 1988. But now, he can celebrate this medical achievement," Decker said.

According to "Russia Today", the patient had been infected with HIV for 31 years, a longer period than any previous patient in a state of recovery.

After being diagnosed with leukemia, in 2019 he received a bone marrow transplant with stem cells from an unrelated donor with a rare mutation in which part of the CCR5 gene is missing, making people resistant to HIV.

He waited until he received a "Covid-19" vaccination in March 2021 to stop taking antiretrovirals, and he has been cured of both HIV and cancer since then.

Decker said low-intensity chemotherapy worked, which could allow older HIV patients with cancer to get treatment.

She added that it is a complex process with serious side effects and "is not an appropriate option for most people living with HIV".

"The first thing you do in a bone marrow transplant is temporarily destroy your immune system," said Stephen Dix, an HIV expert at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the research. "You'd never do that if you didn't have cancer." .

The researchers also announced during the AIDS conference research on a 59-year-old Spanish woman with HIV who maintained an undetectable viral load for 15 years despite stopping antiretroviral therapy.

It's different from the City of Hope patient, because the virus has remained at a very low level, said Sharon Lewin, president-elect of the International AIDS Society that convened the conference.

"We've seen quite a few individual cures before, and the two cases presented today provide continued hope for people living with HIV and inspiration for the scientific community," Lewin said.

She also noted a "really exciting development" toward identifying HIV in an individual cell, which is "a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack."

The researchers determined that the HIV-infected cell has several specific properties.

It can reproduce better than others, is difficult to kill, and is resilient and difficult to detect, said Dix, who led the research.

"And that's why HIV is a lifelong infection."

But he noted that cases like the City of Hope patient offered a potential roadmap toward a more widely available treatment, possibly using CRISPR gene-editing technology.

"I think if you can get rid of HIV, get rid of the CCR5 gene, which is the door through which HIV enters, you can cure someone," Dix continued.

He concluded: "It is theoretically possible to give someone an injection in their arm to deliver an enzyme that enters cells and kills the CCR5 gene, and kills the virus. But this is still just science fiction at the moment."

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