On the 15th local time, American researchers announced that a female leukemia and AIDS patient was cured after receiving a special stem cell transplant, becoming the first woman to recover from AIDS after receiving related therapies.
As soon as the news came out, the #world's first female AIDS cured person appeared #Topic quickly rushed to the top of Weibo's hot search list.
Image source: from Weibo
As we all know, the treatment of AIDS is very tricky and is one of the most insoluble diseases that human beings have encountered.
After being infected with the human virus (HIV), the human immune system is gradually destroyed, and finally all immunity is lost and dies. Although there have been drugs that can control the progression of the virus and prevent the collapse of the immune system, they have not yet achieved the purpose of a complete cure.
The patient, known as the "New York Patient," was a middle-aged woman of mixed race who was diagnosed with AIDS in 2013 and developed "acute myeloid leukemia" four years later.
To treat leukemia, she performed haploid cord blood stem cell transplantation (haplo-cord SCT), which also carries a mutation that prevents hive virus from entering the cell (CCR5∆32/∆32).
The patient was discharged 17 days after transplantation, discontinued antiretroviral therapy 37 months postoperatively, and has maintained a viral load of 14 months < 1cp/ml so far. This state of undetectable virus in the body is called "clear cure".
It is worth noting that this is the third case of AIDS patients in the world, and the CCR5∆32/∆32 stem cells transplanted by her are derived from umbilical cord blood, while the previous 2 cases of "Berlin patients" and "London patients" who were cured of AIDS were transplanted stem cells from bone marrow.
Meanwhile, because a cord blood stem cell transplant can take about six weeks, the "New York patient" receives blood stem cells from relatives to provide her body with temporary immune defenses.
Most importantly, the patient did not develop a serious stem cell transplant side effect, the graft-versus-host response (GvHD), while the first two cured AIDS patients all developed GvHD and experienced life-threatening as a result. Experts say it's unclear why cord blood stem cells perform so well, possibly because they are better equipped to adapt to new environments.
With the rapid development of medicine, we may expect that the current "impossible" can become "possible" in the near future.
bibliography
[1] Gupta RK, Abdul-Jawad S, McCoy LE, Mok HP, Peppa D, Salgado M, Martinez-Picado J, Nijhuis M, Wensing AMJ, Lee H, Grant P, Nastouli E, Lambert J, Pace M, Salasc F, Monit C, Innes AJ, Muir L, Waters L, Frater J, Lever AML, Edwards SG, Gabriel IH, Olavarria E. HIV-1 remission following CCR5Δ32/Δ32 haematopoietic stem-cell transplantation. Nature. 2019 Apr;568(7751):244-248. doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-1027-4. Epub 2019 Mar 5. PMID: 30836379; PMCID: PMC7275870.
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Curated by: Vic Sheep | Executive Producer: Feidi, Eric
Cover image source: Dr. Lilac design team