New patients cured of HIV as the fight against AIDS continues

(Clayton Parker, Flickr Creative Commons)

Last week, it was reported that one man from London and another from Düsseldorf appeared to be cured of HIV by second and third people, which inadvertently happened after a bone marrow transplant to treat cancer of the patient.

The first took place 12 years ago with Timothy Ray Brown, a Seattle man who has been free of HIV since 2007. Mike Lewis of KIRO Radio spoke with Dr. Josh Schiffer, HIV researcher at Fred Hutchison, who discussed his reaction to the announcement of the news and the consequences of this breakthrough. in the fight against HIV.

"This is very encouraging news, it is an encouraging step. The barrier to HIV lies in a population of infected cells that, despite anti-viral treatment, persists throughout life, "said Dr. Schiffer.

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"We have been trying for many years to try to find a way to eradicate these cells or to silence the virus in these cells."

Dr. Schiffer says these findings show researchers some of the mechanisms that make such cells persist, as well as how they might be targeted.

"The reason we know that this seems to be effective is that these people are no longer taking their antiretroviral agents – which prevents the virus from replicating themselves – but still use very sensitive approaches, the virus can not currently be detected in their body. "

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Although the discovery seems to offer a way to eventually cure HIV, we are still far from reality and the latter announcement is by no means a definitive cure.

"The reason it has to be taken with caution and perspective is that the unifying feature of these three people is that they all have cancer and all of them have life-threatening forms of blood cancer, and so they had to undergo stem cell transplant to survive, "said Dr. Schiffer.

"It's a very risky, very expensive procedure and it's not a procedure we would give to a person with chronic HIV who has been well treated and in good health," he said. "What's encouraging here is that it tells us a lot about why the virus persists, but it's not a procedure that would be available for a healthy person with HIV."