2nd ‘cure’ spurs hope vs. HIV-AIDS

It might be possible, after all.

A second patient now appears to be free of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to reports. The “London patient,” as he’s been referred to by scientists, received a bone-marrow stem cell transplant to treat cancer, and has remained virus-free for more than one year after he stopped taking antiretroviral drugs, the medication taken to prevent the growth of the virus.

Although some researchers believe it might be premature to say the patient has been cured, the breakthrough announcement has renewed hopes that an end to AIDS might be possible, if challenging.

“This will inspire people that cure is not a dream,” Dr. Annemarie Wensing, a virologist at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands, told The New York Times.

Over a decade ago, a German doctor announced the first case of a patient who had been cleared of the virus. The “Berlin patient,” who was later identified as Timothy Ray Brown, had leukemia and wasn’t responding to chemotherapy. He received two bonemarrow transplants from a donor with a rare mutation the CCR5 gene, which prevents the virus from entering the cells of the immune system, making people resistant to HIV, and became the first patient to be “cured” of HIV.

Scientists tried to duplicate the results with similar patients, but were never able to succeed, leading some people to believe that the “Berlin” patient had been a fluke. Until now. Dr. Ravindra Gupta, an infectious diseases physician at the University of Cambridge and the leader of a paper on the successful treatment, published the results in the journal Nature on Tuesday.

The treatment is not a realistic option to treat HIV patients in the near future because stem cell transplants pose risks and their side effects can last for a long time. But the announcement should be celebrated as a milestone in the fight against HIV/AIDS, a disease that affects 36.9 million people worldwide.