{"id":169227,"date":"2023-02-21T08:16:54","date_gmt":"2023-02-21T12:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/antiguanewsroom.com\/?p=169227"},"modified":"2023-02-21T08:16:54","modified_gmt":"2023-02-21T12:16:54","slug":"third-person-cured-of-hiv-after-risky-stem-cell-transplant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/antiguanewsroom.com\/third-person-cured-of-hiv-after-risky-stem-cell-transplant\/","title":{"rendered":"Third person \u2018cured\u2019 of HIV after risky stem cell transplant"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A German man has become the third person ever to be effectively\u00a0\u201ccured\u201d of HIV thanks to a stem cell transplant<\/a>\u00a010 years ago.<\/p>

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His breakthrough case was first announced in 2019, but it wasn\u2019t until Monday that researchers confirmed he was indeed HIV-free.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t think there\u2019s a functional virus present,\u201d Dr. Bj\u00f6rn Jensen, the study author and division head of infectious diseases at D\u00fcsseldorf University Hospital in Germany,\u00a0told New Scientist<\/a>.<\/p>

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While the unidentified\u00a0human immunodeficiency virus patient \u2014 known only as the \u201cD\u00fcsseldorf patient\u201d \u2014 is the third to be\u00a0cured through a stem cell transplant<\/a>, he\u2019s now the fifth person ever cured of the virus.<\/p>

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According to the case report published in\u00a0Nature Medicine on Monday<\/a>, the 53-year-old had undergone a stem cell transplant in 2013 to cure leukemia he had been diagnosed with two years prior. However, as luck would have it, the cells came from a donor with a mutation that disables the CCR5 receptor that HIV uses to infect immune cells. This effectively made him immune to the disease like an inadvertent AIDS vaccine.<\/p>\n