Third confirmed HIV cure

12 mars 2023

A third official case of HIV cure was presented in the journal Nature Medicine.

The patient, a man treated for leukemia with a bone marrow transplant in Düsseldorf, no longer has any trace of the virus in his body. Only two similar cases of cure have been previously reported in scientific publications: the Berlin patient in 2009 and the London patient in 2019.

Two other cases of cure were also detailed in scientific conferences last year, but have not yet been formally published. The cured patients all share a unique situation: they were diagnosed with blood cancer and received a stem cell transplant that deeply renewed their immune system. Their donors had a rare genetic mutation that prevents the HIV virus from entering cells. Although these cases offer hope to researchers that HIV may one day be defeated, bone marrow transplants remain a complex and risky procedure that is not suitable for most people living with the virus.