Science buying time on HIV
Two previous cases considered to be “cured” have been reported, the patient in Berlin (confirmed in 2011) and the one in London (2020), who, like the one in Düsseldorf, underwent a stem cell transplant, a medical intervention that can only be It applies to people suffering from a hematological disease.
“These are patients who have suffered from leukemia or lymphoma and, in addition, were carriers of HIV, but this transplant is a very high-risk medical intervention only reserved for people who have no other option from the hematological point of view,” explained Martínez-Picado.
It is difficult “to find a suitable donor, who is not only compatible for the transplant but also has this mutation (CCR5 Delta32), and in this case the probability is very low, approximately 1 in 1 million,” the researcher added.
Considering that this route is not applicable on a large scale, but it does give signs of a path towards a possible solution for all those infected.
Based on this, researchers have been working for some time on this CCR5 Delta32 protein, capable of preventing infection, with the aim of genetically modifying it and implanting it in cells that, once reintroduced into the patient, can rapidly expand to cure the infection. disease.
Other cases in remission
Confirmed patients from Berlin (Timothy Ray Brown, who died of cancer in 2020), London (British of Venezuelan origin Adam Castillejo), and Düsseldorf, there are two other cases of HIV remission that are post-transplant that have that have been presented at scientific conferences and that could be part of the list: the one in New York and the one at the City of Hope Hospital in Duarte (California, United States).
In other cases there are those with “functional cure” —like the patient who is in Barcelona being investigated by the Hospital Clínic—, who are people who have not received a transplant for another disease and who continue to have HIV but who present special factors that They make your body keep the virus under control at undetectable levels, thus eliminating the need to take antiretroviral treatment.