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HEALTH-HIV-AIDS-TREATMENT
HIV-positive man in remission, second case ever: study
PARIS, March 5, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – A second person is in sustained remission
from HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS, after ceasing treatment and is likely
cured, researchers were set to announce at a medical conference Tuesday.
Ten years after the first confirmed case of an HIV-infected person being
rid of the deadly disease, a man known only as the “London Patient” has shown
no sign of the virus for nearly 19 months, they reported in the journal
Nature.
Both patients had received bone marrow transplants to treat blood cancers,
receiving stem cells from donors with a rare genetic mutation that prevents
HIV from taking hold.
“By achieving remission in a second patient using a similar approach, we
have shown that the Berlin Patient was not an anomaly,” said lead author
Ravindra Gupta, a professor at the University of Cambridge, referring to the
first known functional cure.
BSS/AFP/MR/1034 hrs