A U.S. woman diagnosed with leukaemia has become the first woman and the third person in the world to be cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant from a donor who was naturally resistant to the virus that causes AIDS.
In research reports disclosed on Tuesday, February 15, the case of a 64-year-old mixed-race woman was presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Denver, is also the first involving umbilical cord blood, a newer approach that may make the treatment available to more people.
The reports said since the woman received the cord blood to treat her acute myeloid leukaemia, she has been in remission and free of the virus for 14 months, without the need for antiretroviral therapy.
The case is part of a larger United States-backed study led by Dr Yvonne Bryson of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and Dr Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
The woman in question was diagnosed with HIV in 2013 and leukaemia in 2017, making her a potential candidate.
She received the treatment four years ago, and in the time since her cancer has gone into remission, her HIV treatment was discontinued last winter.
Reports said her body reacted well to the treatment, and she quickly saw positive results despite dropping HIV treatment over a year ago.
Repeated scans of her body showed no HIV cells with the potential of replicating, as cells were also drawn from her body in an attempt to infect them in a laboratory, which failed.
