A 53-year-old man in Düsseldorf, Germany, has been declared cured of HIV by doctors after a successful blood stem cell transplant to treat leukaemia.
The “Dusseldorf patient” tested positive for HIV in 2008. In 2011, he developed leukaemia which was treated with chemotherapy, but it came back the following year.
In 2013, the blood stem cells in the man’s bone marrow that give rise to immune cells, including the cancerous ones, were killed off by chemotherapy. Later, they were replaced with donor blood stem cells.
After the transplant, researchers have now reported that the Dusseldorf patient has been off HIV medications for four years, with no signs that the virus remains in his body.
Timothy Ray Brown, the first person cured of HIV, was given a bone marrow transplant from a donor who was naturally resistant to HIV in 2007.
Timothy Ray Brown, 54, who was born in the US, was diagnosed with HIV while he lived in Berlin in 1995. In 2007, he developed a type of blood cancer called acute myeloid leukaemia.
The London Patient, who was later identified as Adam Castillejo, was the second person known to have been cured of HIV infection. His body became resistant to HIV infection after receiving a bone marrow transplant to treat Hodgkin's lymphoma.
According to the World Health Organization, 38.4 million people globally were living with HIV at the end of 2021. An estimated 0.7 per cent of adults aged 15–49 years worldwide are living with HIV.