Woman beats HIV using novel treatment

The American became the fourth person ever to be cured of the virus

A New York woman who had undergone a risky treatment for HIV appears to have been cured of the disease. She finished her medication a year ago, and now doctors say they are unable to find any trace of the virus in her system.

The woman, known only as the “New York patient,” was diagnosed with HIV in 2013, and developed leukemia in 2017. Her situation seemed hopeless, but it also made her a perfect candidate for a rare and extremely risky stem-cell treatment.

Due to its high fatality rate, the procedure is only being offered to HIV patients who also have late-stage cancer that requires urgent intervention.

In order to administer the treatment, doctors need to obtain umbilical cord blood and bone marrow from a donor with a unique mutation that makes them immune to the virus. This is only found in 1% of the population, mainly in northern Europeans.

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The umbilical cord blood and bone marrow are then used in ‘haploidentical cord transplantation’, which aims to tackle both HIV and cancer in the patient.

The cord blood helps to fight blood-based cancers, while the bone marrow provides stem cells for the body, thus improving the effectiveness of the treatment.

The woman in question underwent the dangerous procedure four years ago at the New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center.

Doctors told NBC that her body had reacted well to the intervention, and positive results were recorded shortly afterwards.

The patient’s cancer had gone into remission, and a year ago she was able to discontinue her HIV treatment.

The woman has since been repeatedly tested with no signs of the virus recurring. Clinicians have also taken cells from her and tried infecting them with HIV in a laboratory, but were unable to do so.

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At this point, the ‘New York patient’ can be considered to be the first female and the fourth person ever to be cured of the virus. Two females are known to have overcome the virus naturally.

Doctors, however, are in no rush to celebrate a complete victory. “You don’t want to over-call it,” Dr. Yvonne J. Bryson of UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine cautioned. According to her, “remission” would be a more preferable word to describe the woman’s condition at this moment.

A few more years will have to pass before medics can officially proclaim the ‘New York patient’ to be cured.

Dr. Bryson said she was still “excited” by the result of the stem-cell treatment, saying it’s given the researchers “more hope and more options for the future.”

Her colleague, Dr. Koen van Besien, director of the Stem Cell Transplant Program, said there were “approximately 50 patients per year in the US who could benefit from this procedure.”