Doctors say that a person with HIV is in the process of long-term recovery, that is, effectively getting rid of the terrible virus. The person known as the “Geneva Patient” made history as the sixth person with HIV to be declared to be in long-term remission.
The news of the sixth patient was announced by the Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève (HUG) and Institut Pasteur ahead of the International AIDS Conference, where they will formally present their findings on July 24 in Brisbane, Australia.
In five previous cases of people effectively “curing” HIV infection following a bone marrow transplant, the transplants included stem cells from a donor with a mutation of the CCR5 gene, which is known to prevent HIV from entering body cells.
Although this sixth patient is generally similar to these cases, he has one important difference. Bone marrow from a donor who did not carry the CCR5 mutation was used to transplant the new person’s bone marrow.
Geneva University Hospitals HIV/AIDS Unit Director Dr. Alexandra Calmy and Head of the Institut Pasteur Viral Reservoirs and Immune Control Unit, Dr. “The time undetected after treatment interruption – 20 months – is unprecedented in people who have had a marrow transplant without a CCR5 mutation,” Asier Sáez-Cirión said in a statement.
The person had been living with HIV since the early 1990s and has been on antiretroviral therapy since the beginning. In 2018, she underwent a stem cell transplant to treat a particularly aggressive form of leukemia. Tests after the transplant showed that the blood cells were completely replaced by the donor’s cells, and the number of HIV-infected cells dropped significantly.
Thereafter, the use of antiretroviral drugs was gradually discontinued and treatment was permanently discontinued in November 2021. 20 months after stopping treatment, no signs of the virus or immune response to the virus were found in the person’s body. In other words, the disease had been effectively treated.
“What happened to me is wonderful and magical – now we can focus on the future,” the Geneva patient said in a separate statement.
The researchers stressed that this extraordinary case does not mean that a widespread cure for HIV is imminent. For now, cases of prolonged HIV remission are seen as exceptional examples. However, the unique case of the Geneva patient offers some invaluable insights into possible new ways to treat HIV.
“Though this protocol may not be applicable on a large scale due to its aggressiveness, this new case provides unexpected insights into the mechanisms of eliminating and controlling viral reservoirs that will play an important role in designing curative HIV treatments,” Sáez-Cirión continues.
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