HIV is MIA Thanks to New Treatment

🦠 A NYC woman of mixed race appears to be the third person ever cured of HIV after receiving a transplant of blood stem cells from an adult relative and the umbilical cord of an unrelated newborn. The details of her case were presented yesterday at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections.

• Unlike many people who have HIV but stay healthy by keeping the virus at low levels using drugs, doctors said this woman showed zero detectable signs of HIV in her body after extensive testing.
• The treatment used in her case is likely to be suitable for a wider range of patients than the bone marrow transplants that were used to cure two other people of HIV, since umbilical-cord blood is more widely available and doesn’t have to be as precise of a genetic match.

✋ Yes, but… The researchers stressed that it would be unethical to attempt this treatment on any patient who wasn’t also suffering from a potentially fatal cancer or other condition, since the associated risks and costs are too severe. The woman who was cured also had an aggressive form of leukemia.

🌎 Zoom out: Worldwide, nearly 38 million people are living with HIV, including 1.2+ million Americans.