Second patient cured of HIV in Germany

Tengrinews.kz - A patient in Germany has been cured of HIV, according to a report from Berlin's Charite Clinic. This marks a significant milestone, as no signs of the virus have been detected in his body for five years.

A 60-year-old man was diagnosed with HIV in 2009. In 2015, he was diagnosed with acute myeloblastic leukemia. For treatment, he received a stem cell transplant from a donor whose cells were not susceptible to HIV.

After the transplant, doctors did not find HIV in the patient. He had been off HIV medication for five years, and tests all that time showed the virus was gone.

"It is surprising that the treatment was successful even though the donor was not immune to HIV. Usually HIV comes back after a transplant without such a donor. The success is probably due to the fact that the new immune cells destroyed all the patient's HIV-infected cells. We replaced the immune system and removed all the places where the virus was hiding so that HIV could no longer infect the new immune cells," explained Christian Gebler from the Charite Clinic.

The first case of a complete cure for HIV was at the Charite Clinic in 2007 with American Timothy Ray Brown. This was due to a stem cell transplant from a donor with a CCR5 mutation, which helped to cure his leukemia.