Three people who have been successfully cured of HIV have revealed how a risky transplant procedure saved their lives, with one saying they are “living proof” of hope in the fight against the virus.
The three spoke about their experience at the International AIDS Conference, held in Munich, where experts, researchers and activists gathered to discuss the evolution of the HIV epidemic.
Only seven people are thought to have been effectively cured following a stem cell transplant. This is a painful and risky procedure, suitable only for patients suffering from both HIV and aggressive leukemia.
Adam Castillejo, 44, also known as the “London patient”, told AFP it took “years” to be sure his transplant had the desired effect.
“There’s no set time when you say: ‘You’re cured’, it takes a while and then you have controlled expectations about it.”
Only when doctors are confident that a patient will not develop HIV again do they stop treatment with antiretroviral drugs, which reduce the amount of virus in the blood.
55-year-old Marc Frank – the “Dusseldorf patient” – also had to undergo this painful procedure.
“The doctors ran multiple tests to be 100 percent sure before stopping antiretroviral therapy,” Frank said.
A bone marrow transplant, which carries a 10 percent risk of death, essentially replaces a person’s immune system.
Pointing to the “huge” mortality rate and other complications, Franke even said: “I can’t recommend it to anybody.”
Despite having “lost many years” to leukemia, Franke said looking back he “would have preferred to take an antiretroviral pill every day” rather than go through the painful transplant process.
Inspiring ‘New Directions’
Earlier this month, doctors announced that the number of people effectively cured of HIV had risen to seven.
The seventh patient, dubbed the “next Berlin patient,” underwent a bone marrow transplant for leukemia in 2015 and stopped taking antiretroviral drugs at the end of 2018.
Medical researchers said he now appears to be free of both HIV and cancer.
Sharon Levine, president of the International AIDS Society, called the cases “really exciting” but acknowledged the treatment might only be applicable to a small number of people.
Levin said the procedure has effectively cured “only seven of the 40 million people with HIV.” “These are very rare cases, but they inspire new directions in science.”
All but one of the seven patients received stem cells from donors who had a rare gene mutation that makes people effectively immune to HIV.
Paul Edmunds is over sixty years old and was the third patient to speak about his experiences at the conference.
He agreed that “stem cell transplantation is not for everyone because there are a lot of risks involved”.
However, Edmunds said his and his fellow patients’ experience “gave hope … that a cure is possible, because we are living proof that it can happen”.
According to the World Health Organization, 1.3 million new HIV infections were reported last year, while 39 million people are living with the virus.
Timothy Ray Brown – the original “Berlin Patient” – was the first person to be cured of HIV in 2008. Brown died of cancer in 2020.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
