Still, that is big news, considering how many people have died from HIV, and how many still live with the virus. Treatment has come a long way - I remember how it was practically a death penalty in the 1990s; but a complete cure would be so much better than depending on medication for the rest of one's life. I don't think this is the breakthrough, but it is proof that search for a cure is not futile.
Definitely not. Five year survival rate for stem cell transplants is about 50%. People with HIV now have effectively normal life expectancies provided that they're treated. Even if this worked reliably, it would be _very_ much a case of the cure being worse than the disease.
That said, IIUC the whole stem cell transplant procedure is unpleasant enough that it still might not be worth it.
"The major cause of death is relapse, which accounts for approximately 40% of all deaths, followed by infections at 25% and graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) at 20%."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266663672...
A good friend of mine died from a C. Diff infection in the hospital after a bone marrow transplant. It is very risky, especially with an imperfect match.
That said, you can help make it less risky! This used to be called "Be The Match", not sure why they renamed it but you could save someone's life by registering to be a donor:
You get to save the life of a stranger AND they give you a t-shirt. Win win!
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/7th-person-hiv-cu...
There is at least one documented case of someone using anti-retroviral therapy, getting their viral load down to undetectable, stopping the therapy and remaining undetectable for years without continued therapy. They use the word "remission" rather than "cure" because there are fragments of viral dna that remain in your cells and it's possible for a "reservoir" of inactive virus to exist and activate, so there will always be regular testing involved in any attempt to eliminate the virus entirely, but whether it technically counts as "cured" becomes a nearly-moot point when one is able to live the same way that someone who has never been exposed lives save for the testing.
The HIV-free transplanted immune system sees the original immune system as alien, and proceeds to wipe it out at the cellular level. This presumably takes the HIV with it, even if the new immune system is not itself resistant.
I guess this means that quiescent HIV is not at a stage in its lifecycle where it can reinfect cells if its host cell is destroyed. My hilarious mental model of infectious HIV virions floating inside a CD4+ T-cell like angry bees inside a balloon is clearly mistaken.
Edit: Yep.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02463-w
It’s happened at least 5 times.
I believe in all previous cases the donors had mutations of the CCR5 gene which made them resistant to HIV.
> Significantly, he is also the second of the seven who received stem cells that were not actually resistant to the virus, strengthening the case that HIV-resistant cells may not be necessary for an HIV cure.
> A handful of people with HIV have been cured after receiving HIV-resistant stem cells – but a man who received non-resistant stem cells is also now HIV-free
Traubenfuchs•2mo ago
francisofascii•2mo ago
inglor_cz•2mo ago
hiddencost•2mo ago
The point is that this is not repeatable: curing HIV isn't something we now know how to do.
The second point is: this did not give us a significant new insight into the causes or mechanisms of treatment of HIV
Traubenfuchs•2mo ago
Technically we do but we will never ever give someone a stem cell transplant to cure their HIV because there are SIX highly effective different classes of medication to treat HIV. Majorly treatment resistant high fitness HIV is NOT a concern on the horizon.
> The second point is: this did not give us a significant new insight into the causes or mechanisms of treatment of HIV
The first unique cases of both variants of this DID lead to significant, valuable insights in several areas. But further cases, not so much. Myeloablation clearing the HIV reservoirs while the patient continues being on ART leading to a total cure does not excite any knowledgeable scientist anymore in 2025.