Scientists announced Tuesday that the first woman appears to be cured of HIV using a cutting-edge stem cell transplant method.
According to the National Institutes of Health, this is the third known case of HIV remission in an individual who received a stem cell transplant. The results suggest that cord stem cell transplantation should be considered to achieve HIV remission and cure for people living with HIV, so long as they require such a transplant for other diseases, according to the study team.
The treatment used stem cells from umbilical cord blood, which is more widely available than adult stem cells used in bone marrow transplants.
According to the study, a woman who had been taking antiretroviral drugs for HIV for four years was diagnosed with leukemia, which then went into remission after chemotherapy.
In 2017, she received a transplant of cord blood stem cells supplemented with adult donor cells from a relative. After waiting 100 days, she received 100 percent cord blood, and at that point had no detectable HIV.
At 37 months post-transplant, the patient ceased HIV treatment, and according to the study, no HIV was detected in the participant for 14 months
But in an interview with the Conversations on Healthcare podcast, White House medical advisor and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci was guarded about the implications for the future.
“I don’t want people to think that now this is something that can applied to the 36 million people living with HIV,” Fauci said, because the procedure isn’t really an option for anyone who doesn’t already need treatment for a condition outside of HIV.
“This is much more of a proof of concept, that one can actually get the virus out and be suppressed for a long period of time. It is not practical to think this is something that will be widely available,” he said.