German patient cured of HIV

A patient from Düsseldorf (Germany) became the third confirmed case of HIV cure in the world after a stem cell transplant to treat leukemia, which brings little closer to the possibility of a treatment applicable on a large scale.

The case was studied by the IciStem consortium, coordinated by the University Medical Center of Utrecht (Netherlands) and the IrsiCaixa AIDS Research Institute of Badalona (Barcelona, ​​Spain), a center jointly promoted by the La Caixa Foundation and the Department of Health of the Generalitat.

He is a reclusive male who prefers to keep his identity supervised antiretroviral treatment of HIV after undergoing stem cell transplantation for the treatment of myeloid leukemia, and four years later the virus did not appear again.

Study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, showed the absence of HIV and the immune response against this virus in the patient’s body despite not receiving treatment for four years, evidence that allows us to confirm that this is a new case of cure.

In 2008, a medical team from Düsseldorf (Germany) diagnosed an infection with HIV of this patient and started standard antiretroviral treatment, which allows the infection to be controlled and the amount of virus to be reduced to such minimal levels that they cannot be detected by a blood test and are not contagious.

Four years later, in 2012, he contracted leukemia, for which he underwent a stem cell transplant.

In these very unique cases, a stem cell donor is sought who has a mutation called CCR5 Delta32, which prevents the body from producing one of the gateways for HIV into cells and therefore makes infection more difficult.

More than five years after the transplant, after undergoing two relapses of leukemia and various complications, the patient stabilized and the research team agreed to withdraw antiretroviral treatment of HIV.

“It’s been ten years since the transplant and four since stopping the antiretroviral drug; normally, when treatment is stopped, the virus reappears in four days, so four years is enough time to say it’s a cure,” he said. Co-author of the article and IrsiCaixa researcher, Javier Martínez-Picado, told EFE.

There are two previous cases considered cured, a patient in Berlin (confirmed in 2011) and one in London (2020), who, like the one in Düsseldorf, underwent a stem cell transplant, a medical intervention that applies only to people who suffer from hematological diseases.

“These are patients who have recovered from leukemia or lymphoma and, in addition, they were HIV carriers, but this transplant is a very risky medical intervention reserved only for people who have no other option from a hematological point of view,” Martínez-Picado pointed out.

In addition, it is difficult “to find a suitable donor, who is not only compatible for transplantation but also has this mutation (CCR5 Delta32), and the probability is very low, approximately 1 in 1 million”, he pointed out. .

So this path is not applicable to a large extent, but It shows the way to a possible solution for all those infected.

In this sense, researchers have been working for some time on this CCR5 Delta32 protein, which can prevent infection, with the goal of genetically modifying it and incorporating it into cells that, once reintroduced into the patient, can spread. cure the disease quickly.