Scientists have inched closer to finding the real cure for HIV/AIDS after another man who was until recently HIV-positive was successfully cured of the disease in Britain. The London-based patient was confirmed HIV-free following a bone marrow transplant from a HIV-resistant donor.
Reports released on Tuesday, March 5, indicated doctors conducted numerous tests on the said patient and they could not find a single trace of the AIDS virus three years after the bone marrow transplant procedure. “There was no virus that we could measure. We could not detect anything. Highly sensitive tests showed no trace of the man’s previous HIV infection. We can thus say the patient is functionally cured,” said Ravindra Gupta, one of the medics working on the man’s case.
Gupta explained the patient had not been taking anti-retroviral drugs for over 18 months at the time of testing after he received stem cells from HIV-resistance donor. The medics, however, cautioned it was still too early to say they had discovered the cure for HIV/AIDS and that what they have is a proof of concept which can be used to find the cure.
Researchers cure 5 HIV patients with new vaccine-based treatment This was the second time a man was cured of AIDS after receiving stem cells from a donor with a genetic mutation known to resist the killer virus. The first case was reported in 2007 when a HIV-positive American citizen, identified as Timothy Brown, who had undergone a similar treatment later tested HIV-negative
As of March 2019, some 37 million people globally were said to be living with the AIDS virus. About 35 million others have died of AIDS in the past three decades. Scientist are increasingly hopeful that cure would be found soon after over