By A second person has been cured of HIV
A London man has become the second person in the world to be cured of HIV.
He received treatment at Hammersmith Hospital.
Adam Castillejo, 40, is free of the virus more than 30 months after stopping anti-retroviral therapy.
Castillejo was cured by a stem-cell treatment he received for a cancerous cells he also had. The donors of those stem cells had an uncommon gene that gave them, and now Mr Castillejo, protection against HIV. In 2011, Timothy Brown became the first person to be cured of HIV after having similar treatment.
Stem-cell transplants appear to stop the virus being able to replicate inside the body by replacing the patient’s own immune cells with donor ones that resist HIV infection.
Adam Castillejo is now in “sustained remission” and has no detectable active HIV infection in his blood, semen or tissues, his doctors say.
This treatment will not be suitable for all of the millions of people around the world living with HIV, because the therapy was primarily used to treat the patients’ cancers, not their HIV.
Current HIV drugs remain very effective, meaning people with the virus can live long and healthy lives.
These developments do, however, offer hope of finding a cure in the future, using gene therapy.
Tests suggest that through gene therapy, 99% of Mr Castillejo’s immune cells have been replaced by donor ones, but he still has remnants of the virus in his body, as does Mr Brown.
It is impossible to say with absolute certainty his HIV will never come back.
Prof Sharon Lewin, from the University of Melbourne, Australia, said:
“Given the large number of cells sampled here and the absence of any intact virus, is the London Patient truly cured?
The additional data provided in this follow-up case report is certainly encouraging but unfortunately, in the end, only time will tell.”
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