Thanks to a transplant: a patient at Geneva University Hospital is said to have recovered from HIV

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Worldwide, only five people are thought to be able to recover from HIV infection after bone marrow transplants, the Geneva University Hospital (HUG) wrote in a press release on Thursday. In all these cases, the transplant came from a donor with the rare CCR5 delta 32 gene mutation known to make cells naturally resistant to HIV.

The characteristic of the patient cared for in HUG is that the transplant comes from a donor who does not carry the mutation. Despite this, the virus remains undetectable in the patient 20 months after the end of antiretroviral therapy.

Unexpected Findings

So this sixth case brings unexpected insights that can lead to new discoveries. These findings will be presented at the 26th International AIDS Society Congress in Brisbane, Australia, on 24 July. HUG collaborated with the Paris-based Institut Pasteur for the study.

The patient has been living with HIV since the early 1990s and has been on antiretroviral therapy ever since. He was treated with a stem cell transplant in 2018 to treat a particularly aggressive form of leukemia.

Tests one month after the transplant showed that the patient’s blood cells had been completely replaced by the donor’s cells. These results were accompanied by a dramatic reduction in HIV-carrying cells.

“What happened to me beautiful”

Antiretroviral therapy was gradually tapered and finally discontinued in November 2021. No virus particles, an activatable virus reservoir, and an increased immune response to the virus were detected in the patient’s body in the tests performed since treatment was discontinued.

These findings do not exclude that the virus is still present in the body, but allows the scientific team to view the patient as a case of recovery, that is, the disappearance of HIV infection. In the press release, it is reported that the patient said, “What happened to me is very beautiful, magical, we look at the future with optimism.”

Special case

“We are exploring new avenues in this unique situation in the hope that HIV remission or even treatment will no longer be an extraordinary event,” explains Alexandra Calmy, head of the HUG HIV/AIDS department.

Asier Sáez-Cirión, head of the viral reservoirs and immune control department at the Pasteur Institute, stated that due to its peculiarity, the case cannot be transferred on a large scale. However, it provides unexpected insights into the mechanisms of clearing and controlling viral reservoirs that will be important for the development of curative HIV treatments. (SDA)

Source : Blick