a resident of NY she has become the first woman possibly to have been cured of HIVthis due to a transplant of umbilical cord stem cells resistant to that virus, which were combined with others from a close relative to increase the chances of success of the intervention.
The patient also suffered from a type of leukemiawhich required a bone marrow transplant, with which the virus “He disappeared” from 2017; period that has been considered reasonable to consider that it may be cured.
Despite the fact that the case was announced a year ago during a medical congress, it is until now that the results have been published in the Cell Magazine, by a team headed by the University of California (UCLA) and the Johns Hopkins.
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According to the post, to this day, four people have been considered cured of HIVin Berlin, London, Düsseldorf and now New York; all patients had leukemia and required a bone marrow transplantwhich is only indicated for patients with hematological cancers due to their level of risk.
The New York patient was described as a middle-aged woman who identifies as “racially mixed”, In addition to undergoing a stem cell transplant resistant to HIV from umbilical cord blood and not from a matched adult donor.
Likewise, the medical team considered that the treatment had given “satisfactory long-term results”next to “that the use of umbilical cord blood stem cells increases the chance of curing HIV in people of all racial origins”.
The use of cells umbilical cord “expands opportunities for people of diverse ancestry living with HIV who require transplantation for other conditions to achieve a cure“, explains the study.
While the patients in Berlin, London and Düsseldorf received transplants of matched adult stem cells who carried two copies of the mutation CCR5-delta32a natural mutation that confers resistance to HIV by preventing the virus from entering and infecting cells.
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Only about 1% of white people are homozygous for the CCR5-delta32 mutation and is still rarer in other populations, which limits the possibility of transplanting them to patients of color, since transplants of mother cells they usually require a great donor and recipient compatibility.
So the conditions made almost impossible to find an adult donor for the 2017 patient.
Due to the invasiveness of the procedure, stem cell transplants are only considered for people who need this procedure for other reasons, and not to cure HIV in isolation, a disease for which there is a drug treatment.
(With information from EFE)
