A 64-year-old US patient with leukaemia has reportedly become the first woman, and third person to date, to be cured of HIV following a stem cell transplant from a donor who scientists claim was naturally resistant to the virus that causes AIDS.
The mixed-race woman is also the first involving umbilical cord blood, “a newer approach that may make the treatment available to more people,” reports ABC News.
Since the woman received the cord blood to treat her acute myeloid leukaemia, she has been free of the virus for 14 months, without any need for the other HIV treatments (antiretroviral therapy), IOL adds.
The two prior cases occurred in males – one white and one Latino – who also received adult stem cells which forms part of the more common procedure of bone marrow transplants.
“This is now the third report of a cure in this setting, and the first in a woman living with HIV,” Sharon Lewin, president-elect of the International AIDS Society, said in a statement.
The case is part of a large US-backed study that was led by Dr Yvonne Bryson of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and Dr Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
It aims to follow 25 people with HIV who undergo a transplant with stem cells taken from umbilical cord blood for the treatment of cancer and other serious conditions.
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