(PatriotPostNews.com) — Seven people have now functionally been cured of HIV. The seven were found to have undetectable levels of HIV for a number of years without the use of antiviral medications. Reports say a 60-year-old-German man could be cured of the virus.
The 60-year-old underwent a stem cell transplant which can be fatal. Physicians are hesitant to prescribe the treatment unless it could treat two or more conditions at once. In the case of the 60-year-old man, known as the Next Berlin Patient, he was suffering from both blood cancer and HIV.
He was titled after the Berlin Patient who was cured of HIV in 2008 via the same treatment. Timothy Ray Brown, the Berlin Patient, came forward publicly but many of the others remain under pseudonym. Brown was an American living in Germany.
The Second Berlin Patient was diagnosed with HIV sometime in 2009. He underwent a stem cell transplant. The transplant typically involves using therapies to destroy the patient’s existing stem cells and then replacing the cells with donor cells. Stem cells reside in bone marrow, but the donor stem cells are delivered intravenously. If successful, the new cells will grow inside the patient’s bones and replace the patient’s immune system with the healthy donor system.
It was believed that for the treatment to work on HIV, the donor must have two mutated copies of the CCR5 gene that confer resistance to HIV. The CCR5 protein allows HIV to enter the body. The mutated form of the gene does not allow the virus to enter. People with the mutation exhibit HIV immunity, but the Second Berlin Patient’s donor only had a single copy. This breakthrough means that the donor pool can be expanded.
The treatments are still experimental. The Geneva patient was similarly cured of HIV via bone marrow transplant, but their donor did not have any mutated CCR5 genes and it is not currently understood how the treatment cured the patient.
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