A US patient is believed to be the third person in the world, and first woman, to be cured of HIV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The patient was being treated for leukaemia when she received a stem cell transplant from someone with natural resistance to the Aids-causing virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The woman has now been free of the virus for 14 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But experts say the transplant method used, involving umbilical cord blood, is too risky to be suitable for most people with HIV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The patient’s case was presented at a medical conference in Denver on Tuesday and is the first time that this method is known to have been used as a functional cure for HIV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The patient received a transplant of umbilical cord blood as part of her cancer treatment and has since not needed to take the antiretroviral therapy required to treat HIV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The case was part of a larger US study of people living with HIV who had received the same type of blood transplant to treat cancer and serious diseases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The transplanted cells that were selected have a specific genetic mutation which means they can’t be infected by the HIV virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scientists believe the immune system of recipients can develop resistance to HIV as a result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The potential of stem cell transplants was demonstrated in 2007 when Timothy Ray Brown was the first person to be “cured” of HIV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He had a transplant from a donor who was naturally resistant to HIV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since then the feat has been repeated only twice with Adam Castillejo and now the New York patient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All three had cancer and needed a stem cell transplant to save their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The woman’s treatment involved umbilical cord blood, unlike the two previous known cases where patients had received adult stem cells as part of bone marrow transplants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Umbilical cord blood is more widely available than the adult stem cells previously used and it does not require as close a match between donor and recipient.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A US patient is believed to be the third person in the world, and first woman, to be cured of HIV. The patient was being treated for leukaemia when she received a stem cell transplant from someone with natural resistance to the Aids-causing virus. The woman has now been free of the virus for 14 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":35857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,2],"tags":[666,5,6,8,7],"class_list":{"0":"post-35856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-international","8":"category-news","9":"tag-hiv","10":"tag-news19","11":"tag-news19-lk","12":"tag-sri-lanka","13":"tag-sri-lanka-news"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.news19.lk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.news19.lk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.news19.lk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.news19.lk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.news19.lk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.news19.lk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.news19.lk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.news19.lk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.news19.lk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eng.news19.lk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}