5th Man Cured Of HIV After Stem Cell Transplant

Topline

A 53-year-old man from Germany has been cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant in 2014, according to findings published Monday in Nature Medicine, as researchers say he is the fifth to be cured of the virus—which affects more than 30 million people globally—after receiving the procedure.

A fifth person was cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant.

Key Facts

The man—referred to as “the Düsseldorf patient”—has no detectable traces of the HIV virus, researchers said Monday, and had stopped taking his HIV medication in 2019.

Dr. Björn-Erik Ole Jensen, the patient’s physician, reported the man had no signs of active HIV during a conference in 2019—though he wouldn’t declare the virus “in remission.”

Jensen noted the virus is “really cured” and not in “long-term remission” in an interview with ABC News.

More than 40 million people have died of AIDS since the epidemic began in the early 1980s.

Surprising Fact

The first person to be cured of HIV was Timothy Ray Brown, who was referred to by researchers as “the Berlin patient” in findings published in 2009. Three others have also been cured, including “the London patient” in 2019 and “The City of Hope” and “New York” patients in 2022. All four underwent stem cell transplants—a high-risk procedure also referred to as a bone marrow transplant—to treat blood cancer and received an HIV-resistant mutation from their donors, which deletes a protein the virus normally uses to enter blood cells.

Curcial Quote

“I think we can get a lot of insights from this patient and from these similar cases of HIV cure,” Jensen said, noting he thinks all five cases “give us some hints where we could go to make the strategy safer.”

Big Number

38.4 million. That’s how many people across the world have HIV, according to estimates by the United Nations in 2021. Of these, 36.7 million were adults and 1.7 million were children under 15.

Key Background

HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus, is a virus that attacks the body’s immune system and if not treated, can lead to AIDS, or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention note there is no effective cure for the virus, and “once people get HIV, they have it for life.” Though the virus can be detected through symptoms—which can be visible as flu-like symptoms within two to four weeks after infection—though the only way to be diagnosed is by being tested. Despite there being no cure for the virus, some researchers have started to implement stem cell transplants as treatment, allowing doctors to insert anti-HIV genes or mutations into an affected person’s new immune system.