This abnormality is seen largely among people with northern European ancestry, occurring at a rate of about 1% among those native to the region.Īccording to Dr. Next, the man received the stem cell transplant from the donor with an HIV-resistant genetic abnormality. Because of his older age, he received a reduced intensity chemotherapy to prepare him for his stem cell transplant - a modified therapy that older people with blood cancers are better able to tolerate and that reduces the potential for transplant-related complications. He was treated with chemotherapy to send his leukemia into remission prior to his transplant. is steadily aging the majority of people diagnosed with HIV is now older than 50. Thanks to effective HIV treatment, the population of people living with the virus in the U.S. Even when HIV is well treated, people with the virus are still at greater risk of a host of cancers that are associated with aging, including AML and other blood cancers. In 2018, the man was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, or AML. After taking some of the early antiretroviral therapies, such as AZT, that were once prescribed as individual agents and failed to treat HIV effectively, the man started a highly effective combination antiretroviral treatment in the 1990s. The man was at one time diagnosed with AIDS, meaning his immune system was critically suppressed. And even through ultra-sensitive tests, including biopsies of the man’s intestines, researchers couldn’t find any signs of viable virus. This means the man has experienced no viral rebound. Dickter is on the patient’s treatment team and presented his case at this week’s conference. Jana Dickter, an associate clinical professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at City of Hope. “We monitored him very closely, and to date we cannot find any evidence of HIV replicating in his system,” said Dr. The white male - dubbed the “City of Hope patient” after the Los Angeles cancer center where he received his transplant 3½ years ago - has been off of antiretroviral treatment for HIV for 17 months. The new cure caseĭiagnosed with HIV in 1988, the man who received the stem cell transplant is both the oldest person to date - 63 years old at the time of the treatment - and the one living with HIV for the longest to achieve an apparent success from a stem cell transplant cure treatment. Experts in the field tend to think in terms of decades rather than years when hoping to achieve such a goal against a foe as complex as this virus. The ultimate goal of the HIV cure research field is to develop safe, effective, tolerable and, importantly, scalable therapies that could be made available to wide swaths of the global HIV population of some 38 million people. They are trying to determine, for example, if specific facets of her genetics might favor a viral remission from the treatment and whether they could identify such a genetic profile in other people. The scientists involved in that case told NBC News that much more research is needed to understand why the therapy appears to have worked so well in the woman - it failed in all participants in the clinical trial but her - and how to identify others in whom it might have a similar impact. Nor is it clear that the immune-enhancing approach used in the Spanish patient will work in additional people with HIV. Researchers have failed to cure HIV using this approach in a slew of other people with the virus. There are also no guarantees of success through the stem cell transplant method. Sharon Lewin, an infectious disease specialist at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity at the University of Melbourne, told reporters on a call last week ahead of the conference. “While a transplant is not an option for most people with HIV, these cases are still interesting, still inspiring and illuminate the search for a cure,” Dr. In another case, Spanish researchers determined that a woman who received an immune-boosting regimen in 2006 is in a state of what they characterize as viral remission, meaning she still harbors viable HIV but her immune system has controlled the virus’s replication for over 15 years.Įxperts stress, however, that it is not ethical to attempt to cure HIV through a stem cell transplant - a highly toxic and potentially fatal treatment - in anyone who is not already facing a potentially fatal blood cancer or other health condition that would make them a candidate for such a treatment.
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