SARASOTA – For the first time ever, doctors believe they have cured a female HIV patient.
The woman from New York joins a small group of people whose recovery is providing researchers with road maps to beat the virus.
“There is a third individual in the world that has what we call a functional cure for HIV, meaning they cannot detect her virus,” said Chief Medical Officer at CAN Community Health, Dr. Laura Armas.
The patient, who also had leukemia, received a bone marrow transplant using a new transplant method involving umbilical cord blood.
According to scientists at New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center, the woman has not shown any signs of HIV infections since she stopped treatment for the virus in October 2020 following the transplant.
“In this patient, they took the medications away, and the virus has not shown up, so that what we call in remission vs. suppressed and undetectable, it is not detected, it’s not going to come back or has not shown back up, and they will monitor her for years,” said Dr. Armas.
Researchers say the stem cell treatment is highly risky, because it requires doctors to destroy a patient’s immune system using chemotherapy or radiation and rebuild it with new cells.
“We estimate that only about only 40 or 50 people in the United States would qualify for this treatment but what it tells us is it would allow scientists to look into the mechanisms and to see how we can prevent it in the future and how we can treat it,” said Dr. Armas.
Dr. Armas says although this is a advancement in medicine, the fight and search continues to find a cure.
“Were looking into every single mechanism, in how we can improve not only the lives of our patients but our chances to find, if not the cure but the functional cure of being able to suppress the virus without medications,” said Dr. Armas.
Experts say the treatment is not suitable for anyone who does not have cancer or another potentially fatal condition.