{"id":996198,"date":"2022-02-18T16:44:07","date_gmt":"2022-02-18T16:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/02\/18\/us-woman-becomes-first-female-to-be-cured-of-hiv\/"},"modified":"2022-02-18T16:44:07","modified_gmt":"2022-02-18T16:44:07","slug":"us-woman-becomes-first-female-to-be-cured-of-hiv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/02\/18\/us-woman-becomes-first-female-to-be-cured-of-hiv\/","title":{"rendered":"US woman becomes first female to be cured of HIV"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A US patient is believed to be the third person in the world, and first woman, to be cured of HIV.<\/p>\n

The patient was being treated for leukaemia when she received a stem cell transplant from someone with natural resistance to the Aids-causing virus.<\/p>\n

The woman has now been free of the virus for 14 months.<\/p>\n

But experts say the transplant method used, involving umbilical cord blood, is too risky to be suitable for most people with HIV.<\/p>\n

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The patient\u2019s case was presented at a medical conference in Denver on Tuesday and is the first time that this method is known to have been used as a functional cure for HIV.<\/p>\n

The patient received a transplant of umbilical cord blood as part of her cancer treatment and has since not needed to take the antiretroviral therapy required to treat HIV.<\/p>\n

The case was part of a larger US study of people living with HIV who had received the same type of blood transplant to treat cancer and serious diseases.<\/p>\n

The transplanted cells that were selected have a specific genetic mutation which means they can\u2019t be infected by the HIV virus.<\/p>\n

Scientists believe the immune system of recipients can develop resistance to HIV as a result.<\/p>\n

All HIV cure stories are genuinely remarkable and a cause for celebration \u2013 they prove that it can be done.<\/p>\n

But this approach does not bring us closer to a cure for the 37 million people living with HIV, most of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n

The potential of stem cell transplants was demonstrated in 2007 when Timothy Ray Brown was the first person to be \u201ccured\u201d of HIV. He had a transplant from a donor who was naturally resistant to HIV.<\/p>\n

Since then the feat has been repeated only twice with Adam Castillejo and now the New York patient.<\/p>\n

All three had cancer and needed a stem cell transplant to save their lives. Curing their HIV was never the primary goal and the therapy is too risky to use on everybody with HIV.<\/p>\n

Remember, anti-retroviral therapy gives people with HIV a near-normal life expectancy.<\/p>\n

The main hopes of a cure remain focused on vaccines or drugs that can flush the virus out of the body.<\/p>\n

The woman\u2019s treatment involved umbilical cord blood, unlike the two previous known cases where patients had received adult stem cells as part of bone marrow transplants.<\/p>\n

Umbilical cord blood is more widely available than the adult stem cells previously used and it does not require as close a match between donor and recipient.<\/p>\n

Sharon Lewin, president-elect of the International Aids Society, cautioned that the transplant method used in this case wouldn\u2019t be a viable cure for most people living with HIV.<\/p>\n

But she added that the case \u201cconfirms that a cure for HIV is possible and further strengthens using gene therapy as a viable strategy for an HIV cure.\u201d<\/p>\n

The findings around this most recent case study are yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, so wider scientific understanding is still limited.<\/p>\n

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