AIDS ‘cure’

Amid global anxiety caused by coronavirus, there was some heartening news relating to another incurable virus that we have become all too familiar with. A second patient has been cured of HIV after undergoing an experimental stem cell transplant treatment. Doctors in London said they could find no trace of infection in his body, more than 30 months after he stopped undergoing traditional anti-retroviral treatment. His recovery has been documented in a study published by the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet. Adam Castillejo, 40, was diagnosed with HIV in 2003. Later, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. In 2016, as part of a bone marrow transplant to treat the blood cancer, he received stem cells from donors with a genetic mutation that prevents HIV from taking hold. The only other case of such treatment curing HIV was in 2011 when American Timothy Brown was treated in Berlin.

Unfortunately, with the good news was a caveat: researchers cautioned this is probably not a generalised cure for HIV, which causes a million deaths every year. The treatment was only done as a “last resort” because of the deadly blood cancer. The procedure had a 10% mortality rate, but given that the patient would have certainly died without the related cancer treatment, that risk became irrelevant. Also, “several other” patients who had undergone similar treatment, while responsive, had shown less heartening results. But doctors were still confident that the other patients might continue to improve. Meanwhile, there will be much debate over whether the process of offering stem cell transplants to a broader range of patients suffering from drug-resistant forms of HIV should be considered an option. Some researchers not involved with the study also highlighted the importance of remaining prudent, with a “wait-and-see” attitude towards whether the patient remains HIV-free before suggesting broader application. Still, it looks like we have cured the incurable, and that is always a win. 

Published in The Express Tribune, March 12^th, 2020.

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