A German resident may have achieved a by apparently being cured of HIV, a feat accomplished by only six people worldwide in over four decades since the AIDS epidemic began. The German man, who preferred to remain anonymous, was treated for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with a stem cell transplant in October 2015. He stopped taking his antiretroviral drugs, which are taken as treatment to keep HIV at a low level, in September 2018.
The man has remained in a state of "viral remission," meaning that repeated tests have not detected any trace of HIV in his body. In a statement about his condition, the man said, "a healthy person has many wishes, a sick person only one." The case is expected to be presented soon at the International AIDS Conference in Munich.
This man is the seventh person in the world who appears to have been cured of the virus. However, experts have tempered the excitement with a warning that the treatment undergone by the carriers will be available to only a few—all the patients contracted the virus and later developed blood cancer that required a stem cell transplant to treat the malignancy. The bone marrow donors had immune cells with a rare resistance which likely helped eliminate all copies of the virus in the patients' bodies.
The HIV virus is difficult to cure, partly because it creates many mutations that make it challenging Additionally, some of the cells it infects in the body are "dormant" immune cells that do not destroy the virus. Carriers are requ.