By Shahinaz Geneid
The HIV and AIDS epidemic has sparked fear and generated great stigma around the disease since the earliest reported cases of HIV in humans in the 1970s. Now scientists believe that they have managed to cure two more men infected with HIV as of 2017, bringing about a new stage of progress against the spread of HIV and AIDS.
HIV has been greatly stigmatized in countries around the world since its initial spread, leaving many individuals with little knowledge about the infection and even less about the various treatments, and now potential cure, available to counteract the progression of HIV into AIDS and prevent the transmission of the disease between individuals.
The cure was first successfully implemented on a man known as the “Berlin Patient” in 2005 using stem cell transplants. After being diagnosed with HIV in 1995 and taking medication to make his HIV undetectable and untransmittable, the patient, Timothy Ray Brown, began experiencing symptoms again. He was told by doctors that as a result of the infection, he had developed leukemia, and began rigorous treatments, which included chemotherapy and stem cell transplants. While undergoing this process in a Berlin hospital, however, one of his doctors, Dr. Gero Huetter, had the idea of “looking for a donor who had a mutation called CCR5 Delta 32 on the CD4 cells making them nearly immune to HIV.” After sixty-one attempts to find a donor with this mutation, Brown underwent the transplant and was declared the first person in full HIV remission in 2005.
Twelve years later, two more men, the “Dusseldorf Patient” and the “London Patient,” have also achieved remission through the same treatment method, with the results released in the scientific journal Nature this past month. The success of these three treatments provides hope that HIV may ultimately be curable for more and more individuals infected from the disease, and provides hope for patients like Timothy Ray Brown, who may develop complications from traditional methods of treatment for HIV.
