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 on 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. Read more