A HIV-positive man in Britain has become the second known adult worldwide to be cleared of the Aids virus.The man received a bone marrow transplant from an HIV resistant donor which cured him, his doctors said.Almost three years after receiving bone marrow stem cells from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that resists HIV infection – and more than 18 months after coming off antiretroviral drugs – highly sensitive tests still show no trace of the man’s previous HIV infection.
Ravindra Gupta, a professor and HIV biologist, co-led a team of doctors treating the man.He said: “There is no virus there that we can measure. We can’t detect anything.”
The man is being called “the London patient”, in part because his case is similar to the first known case of a functional cure of HIV – in an American man, Timothy Brown, who became known as the Berlin patient when he underwent similar treatment in Germany in 2007 which also cleared his HIV.
Brown, who had been living in Berlin, has since moved to the United States and, according to HIV experts, is still HIV-free.Some 37 million people worldwide are currently infected with HIV and the Aids pandemic has killed around 35 million people worldwide since it began in the 1980s.
The London patient, whose case was set to be reported in the journal Nature and presented at a medical conference in Seattle on Tuesday, has asked his medical team not to reveal his name, age, nationality or other details.