Health

2nd HIV Patient Has Been ‘Naturally’ Cured Without Treatment – Research

Published

3 years ago

Nov 17, 2021.

A 2nd HIV patient has been naturally cured without medical intervention scientists say.
A woman in Argentina has been declared cured of HIV without getting a stem-cell transplant.
The first report of someone being naturally cured of HIV happened only last year.

EKO HOT BLOG reports that scientists hey have found a second patient whose body seemingly had rid itself of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS — supporting the hope that it may be possible someday to find a way to cure more people of the virus.

This was revealed in an article published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The patient, an unnamed woman living in Argentina, was found to have human immunodeficiency virus in 2013.

Since 2017, an international team of researchers has been poring over the patient’s DNA in search of traces of the virus. The team even checked her placenta after she gave birth in March 2020, STAT reported. After sequencing billions of cells, the scientists have confirmed the woman is HIV-free.

Xu Yu, an immunologist at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard and senior author of a new report on a second person to be “naturally” cured of HIV.

Modern medicine has made it possible for many people to live with the virus under control, but they typically require consistent antiretroviral therapy to prevent the virus from replicating.

In total, four people have now been declared to be cured of HIV.

Two of them, however — known as the Berlin Patient and the London Patient — were cured after receiving stem-cell transplants, a risky procedure that scientists have tried to replicate with other patients without success.

In 2020, scientists shared a report on Loreen Willenberg — the San Francisco Patient, as doctors dubbed her — who was the first known case of a sterilizing cure without medical intervention.

Willenberg and the unnamed patient in Argentina are also known as elite controllers, a small subset of HIV patients whose immune systems naturally suppress the virus.

According to STAT, the Argentine patient is known as the Esperanza Patient because she is from the city of Esperanza — which translates as “hope” in Spanish. She has a daughter, who is HIV-free and is expecting a second child with her partner.

“Just thinking that my condition might help achieve a cure for this virus makes me feel a great responsibility and commitment to make this a reality,” the patient told STAT.

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