The first man to ever be cured of HIV was Ray Brown, better known to the public as the ‘Berlin Man.’ Back in 2007, he underwent a stem cell transplant to treat his leukemia, which also eliminated in HIV infection at the same time.
Since then, there has only been a handful of patients that have been cured of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), and just recently, a man that had the disease since the 80s has been in remission for the last 17 months.
Just like the former stories that have been published by the media, where the patients ‘seem’ to be cured and get nice nicknames, this particular case is being called the “City of Hope Patient,” after where he was treated, which was in Duarte, California.
The difference in this particular case is that the treatment, which was a bone marrow transplant for the blood cancer leukemia, was that his transplant was from a donor that was naturally resistant to the virus in the first place.
But what makes the incredibly remarkable difference is that he happens to be the only patient that was cured of the virus “by coincidence.”
While the man developed leukemia, and needed to do a bone marrow transplant for that particular reason, he managed to find a donor that was resistant to HIV, which then taught the man’s body to also create an immune response to fight HIV. Moreover, he is also the first of the patients that got HIV/AIDS during its epidemic that killed so many, to have experienced this breakthrough.
City of Hope Patient shared with BBC, “When I was diagnosed with HIV in 1998, like many others, I thought it was a death sentence. I never thought I would live to see the day that I no longer have HIV.”
So far, there have only been three people that have seemingly been cured of HIV. This virus weakens the immune system, leading to the more severe case of AIDS, or autoimmune deficiency syndrome, which can be fatal.
This patient no longer needs to take his antiretroviral drugs, which has been the only treatment for HIV since the disease first appeared. That being said, doing a bone marrow transplant is not a likely future cure since it’s a tricky procedure that tends to have adverse side-effects.
Regardless, all these cure cases for HIV have been in those patients that have been given a transplant of some sort, such as stem cells, that may possible have the very rarely occurring natural immunity to HIV.
This case was shared during the AIDS 2022 conference that was held in Montreal, Canada just a few months ago.
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