According to the Global Times, a report recently released by American scientists showed that an American woman with AIDS was successfully cured after stem cell transplant treatment, becoming the world's first female patient to recover from AIDS. This stem cell transplant therapy will provide new options for treating more AIDS patients in the future.
It is believed that this is the third case of AIDS recovery in the world. The patient was reportedly being treated for leukemia at the same time as stem cell transplant therapy, and at present, the patient has not had HIV in his body for 14 months.
The patient's case, presented Feb. 15 at a medical conference in Denver, is part of a large U.S. study of people living with HIV who have received the same type of blood transplant to treat cancer and serious illness.
Scientists explain that the principle of this therapy is to use other people's immune systems to replace the immune system in the patient's body, first need to use chemotherapy to destroy the immune system in the patient's body, including the patient's diseased immune cells, and then by transplanting STEM cells that can resist HIV to rebuild the patient's immune system.
But scientists say the stem cell transplant therapy is more risky for those who are not seriously ill themselves. But any one case of a cure for AIDS is something to celebrate, and they prove that it can be done.
But there is still a long way to go before "curing 37 million people living with HIV", as most people living with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2007, Timothy Ray Brown became recognized as the world's first patient to be cured of AIDS, and his treatment experience proved the potential of stem cell transplantation. Brown is an American leukemia patient who also suffers from AIDS. In 2007, the doctor performed a bone marrow transplant to treat leukemia first, but the result was unexpected, after 3 years of clinical observation, this transplant also cured Brown's AIDS.
In 2019, Adam Castillejo became the second patient to recover from AIDS. Both patients, who used the same therapy, were both transplanted with bone marrow from donors carrying variants that block HIV infection.
The female patient used a combination of cord blood stem cells and a relative's stem cell approach, which was different from the previous two patients. According to the scientists, this could allow her to avoid the serious side effects that usually occur after a bone marrow transplant.
Sharon Lewin, president-designate of the International AIDS Association, warned that the transplantation method used in this case is not a viable treatment for most people living with HIV. But she added that the case confirms the possibility of a cure for HIV and further strengthens the role of gene therapy as a viable strategy to cure AIDS.