Second man seems to be free of AIDS virus after transplant

SEATTLE - A London man appears to be free of the $, S virus after a stem cell transplant, the second suc cess including the “ erlin pa tient,” doctors reported.

The therapy had an early success with Timothy 5ay rown, a 8.S. man treated in ermany who is 1 years post transplant and still free of H,9. 8ntil now, rown is the only person thought to have been cured of infection with H,9, the virus that caus es $, S.

Such transplants are dan gerous and have failed in other patients. They’re also impractical to try to cure the millions already infected.

The latest case “shows the cure of Timothy rown was not a fluke and can be recre ated,” said r. .eith -erome of )red Hutchinson Cancer 5esearch Center in Seattle who had no role. He added that it could lead to a simpler approach that could be used more widely.

The case was published online Monday by the journal 1ature and will be presented at an H,9 conference in Se attle.

The patient has not been identified. He was diagnosed with H,9 in 00 and started taking drugs to control the in fection in 01 . ,t’s unclear why he waited that long. He developed Hodgkin lympho ma that year and agreed to a stem cell transplant to treat the cancer in 01 .

With the right kind of do nor, his doctors figured, the ondon patient might get a bonus beyond treating his cancer a possible H,9 cure.

octors found a donor with a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to H,9. $bout 1 percent of peo ple descended from northern (uropeans have inherited the mutation from both parents and are immune to most H,9. The donor had this double copy of the mutation.

That was “an improbable event,” said lead researcher 5avindra upta of 8niversity College ondon. “That’s why this has not been observed more freTuently.”

The transplant changed the ondon patient’s immune system, giving him the do nor’s mutation and H,9 resis tance.

The patient voluntarily stopped taking H,9 drugs to see if the virus would come back.

8sually, H,9 patients ex pect to stay on daily pills for life to suppress the virus. When drugs are stopped, the virus roars back, usually in two to three weeks.

That didn’t happen with the ondon patient. There is still no trace of the virus after 18 months off the drugs.

rown said he would like to meet the ondon patient and would encourage him to go public because “it’s been very useful for science and for giving hope to H,9 pos itive people, to people living with H,9,” he told The $sso ciated Press Monday.

Stem cell transplants typ ically are harsh procedures which start with radiation or chemotherapy to damage the body’s existing immune sys tem and make room for a new one. There are complications too. rown had to have a sec ond stem cell transplant when his leukemia returned.

Compared to rown, the ondon patient had a less punishing form of chemo therapy to get ready for the transplant, didn’t have radia tion and had only a mild reac tion to the transplant.

r. ero Hutter, the er man doctor who treated rown, called the new case “great news” and “one piece in the H,9 cure puzzle.”