Image Source: Visual China

BEIJING, February 16 (TMTPOST) — A research team in the United States might have cured a woman of HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) with stem cell transplant, according to a research paper published by the team.

The patient involved in the study has leukaemia and was found to have been cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant from umbilical cord blood. The stem cell transplant was expected to treat acute myeloid leukaemia.

After receiving the stem cell transplant, the woman of mixed race has been in remission and free of HIV for 14 months without having antiretroviral therapy. The donor of the stem cell transplant was naturally resistant to HIV. The patient is the first female and non-white patient and the third person across the globe to be cured of HIV.

The case is part of a study led by the University of California, Los Angeles and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore that monitors 25 people with HIV who undergo transplants with stem cells for the treatment of cancer and other conditions.

Patients in the trial received chemotherapy that was expected to kill cancerous immune cells and then receive stem cell transplants from individuals who lack cell receptors that are used by the virus to infect cells.

The two prior cases in which HIV carriers that were cured of the virus occurred in males. The two cases – one white and one Latino – involved the use of stem cells used in bone marrow transplants.

These individuals might have developed an immune system resistant to HIV, scientists said.

Bone marrow transplants are not a viable strategy to cure most people living with HIV, Sharon Lewin, president of the International AIDS Society, said in a statement.

However, the study confirms that a cure for HIV is possible and it strengthens using gene therapy as a viable strategy for an HIV cure, Lewin said.