World's first man 'functionally cured' of HIV

Timothy Ray Brown has been cured of HIV for the past four years with no reappearance of the disease.


Agencies June 06, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, US: In a first, a San Francisco native has apparently been cured of the deadly HIV virus.

Timothy Ray Brown, 45, had tested positive for HIV, the virus symptomatic of AIDs , back in 1995. However, he has managed to eliminate the virus from his body with what doctors describe as a "functional cure".

Dubbed the "Berlin patient", Brown received a stem cell transplant in 2007 when he was suffering from leukemia and HIV, both. The transplant carried an immunity gene which cured Brown of his disease.

“I quit taking my HIV medication the day that I got the transplant and haven’t had to take any since,” said Brown in a CBS report.

However, doctors are cautious not to take Brown's story as a generic cure for AIDs. A lot of questions were still unanswered in his case to determine the exact cause of 'cure'.

Many research organisations have  been working for decades in a bid to find a cure to HIV, and thereby AIDs.

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation donated $10 billion last year to fund a 10 year research program looking for a cure to AIDS.

Almost 100,000 people in Pakistan are affected by the disease with Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa the worst affected. 744 cases of HIV/AIDs were reported from the north western Pakistani province last year.

COMMENTS (8)

Dr. Lane | 12 years ago | Reply

I will clear this up for everyone. This 1% issue, first of all is a theory. And it is 1% of people in the world. The theory is based off of people several 100 years ago who developed immunity to smallpox, but this has been happening all over the world for millions of years whenever there is a plague. A small amount of people survive. There is another theory that states that humans will evolve. therefore 1% of the human population more than likely have immunity to HIV or we could all become extinct. Since this has never happened in the history of mankind this THEORY proves true, but there is not a real way of proving it. Now that we have this case this theory proves to be even stronger. Where yahoo messed up in this article is by stating it was 1% of Caucasians that have immunity. Instead they should have done some good journalism and researched the facts about this theory and all that it states. Then they would have written something like this, "Based on scientific research, it is possible that 1% of people are immune to HIV." What I find really funny is i posted an wrote to Yahoo about this error when this article came out because I knew it would cause so much confusion and when people started to do research about they would become more confused because they segregated the immunity to one nationality.

Trapeze Swinger | 12 years ago | Reply Thinking --> 10,000 is the total number of HIV Victims in Pakistan. In KP, there were 744 cases last year.
VIEW MORE COMMENTS
Replying to X

Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.

For more information, please see our Comments FAQ