BERLIN: In a rare medical achievement, a German man has become only the seventh person in the 40-year history of AIDS to be fully cured of HIV.
The 60-year-old German, who wants to remain anonymous, completely recovered after receiving a stem transplant, the doctors have said.
The man underwent the risky and painful procedure which is performed only on those who have both HIV and acute myeloid leukemia, or AML. The parson started receiving the stem cell transplant in October 2015 and stopped taking his antiretroviral medicines in September 2018.
Since then, he remained on viral remission with no rebound as confirmed by multiple ultra-sensitive tests that found no viable HIV in his body. “A healthy person has many wishes, a sick person only one,” the man reflected on his HIV-free status.
The findings of the case will be presented at the 25th International AIDS Conference in Munich by Dr. Christian Gaebler, a physician-scientist at the Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin.
“The longer we see these HIV remissions without any HIV therapy, the more confidence we can get that we’re probably seeing a case where we really have eradicated all competent HIV,” said Gaebler.
Gaebler, however, had said the patient’s case is suggestive of an HIV cure. The treatment provided to the German patient is not available to nearly 40 million people living with the deadly disease across the world.
It is pertinent to mention that Timothy Ray Brown, was the first person to be declared HIV-free back in 2008. Brown was diagnosed positive with the HIV in 1995 while attending university.
