The Dusseldorf patient
The world's third patient is probably free of HIV in Dusseldorf
Polina Loseva, "The Attic"
The only reliable case of a person being cured of HIV – the "Berlin patient" – was recorded in 2007. 12 years later, this success seems to have been repeated. At an international conference in Seattle dedicated to retroviruses, scientists reported two new encouraging results. First, it became known about the "London patient" who has been in remission for 18 months. Now the trio is closed by the "Dusseldorf patient". He stopped taking antiretroviral therapy just three and a half months ago, but, nevertheless, his blood contains only trace amounts of viral DNA.
The Berlin Patient was a successful but isolated experiment. American Timothy Ray Brown, who studied in Berlin, suffered not only from AIDS, but also from Hodgkin's lymphoma. To cope with it, Brown needed a blood stem cell transplant from a healthy donor. Then the doctors picked up an HIV-resistant donor for him. This was facilitated by the CCR5Δ32 mutation in the gene encoding the receptors by which the virus penetrates into blood cells. The patient had such a mutation in only one of the copies of the gene (he was a heterozygote), and the donor had it in both, that is, his cells did not contain a "healthy" version of the protein at all. As a result, most of Brown's blood cells became resistant to HIV, and a year later it turned out that the virus particles had disappeared from his body.
Since then, many scientists have tried to repeat this result. And only now we were able to succeed. On Monday evening, it became known about the "London patient", in which a team of scientists was able to achieve a remission of 18 months. The doctors published a detailed report on the course of treatment in Nature. Despite the fact that they themselves do not yet risk talking about a complete cure, the results still look encouraging. The London patient, unlike the Berlin one, did not undergo such intensive treatment: Brown not only went through two transplants, but also received a long course of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. And to achieve remission, only one transplant procedure was enough for him, and not two, as in the case of the "Berlin patient".
Following this, a group of German scientists, speaking at a conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic infections, told about the third successful case of treatment of a patient who has already been dubbed the "Dusseldorf patient". He also suffered from lymphoma, did not undergo a course of radiation and received only a single transplant of blood stem cells. For three and a half months after it, despite the cessation of antiretroviral therapy, the patient remains healthy. The most sensitive methods of blood analysis detect only trace amounts of viral DNA in it. And despite the fact that it is also premature to talk about a complete cure here, it seems that, at least for a certain period of time, this therapy gives good results.
Both new patients are participants in the same IciStem program, in which scientists are exploring the possibility of stem cell therapy for AIDS. Now such treatment is being tried only on patients suffering from oncological diseases at the same time. This is due to the fact that transplantation involves many risks, which makes it less reliable than standard antiretroviral therapy. Nevertheless, more than 22,000 cell donors have already been selected as part of the program, and another 39 people have already undergone therapy and bone marrow transplantation. Now they are under the close supervision of doctors, and probably the list of legendary patients will be replenished with new names.
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