Researchers are referring to a 30-year-old woman from Argentina as a “hope patient” after her immune system appears to have cured her of HIV.
This woman is the second person known to have successfully used their immune system to fight the lethal disease in this way, establishing a “sterilizing cure” without the need for stem cells.
Between 2017 and 2020, the woman named the “Esperanza patient” as a symbol of hope, gave blood samples to be studied. After giving birth to an HIV-negative baby in March 2020, she had 1.2 billion blood cells and 500 million placenta tissue cells analyzed.
The study’s co-authors believe their findings will provide hope for a long-term cure for the almost 38 million individuals worldwide who are infected with the virus, which was published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
“Our study shows that such a cure can also be reached during a natural infection – in the absence of bone marrow transplants (or any type of treatment at all),” Dr. Xu Yu, told CNN. “Examples of such a cure that develops naturally suggest that current efforts to find a cure for HIV infection are not elusive and that the prospects of getting to an ‘AIDS-free generation’ may ultimately be successful.”
The patient possesses a unique “elite controller” of the virus, according to the researchers, but has not received regular therapy for eight years and shows no evidence of active infection or intact virus capable of replicating.
“Why is this exciting? It suggests that some elite controllers may have gone beyond simply controlling the virus and instead have managed to eradicate it,” the study read. “If the Esperanza patient has indeed achieved a sterilizing cure, defining the mechanisms responsible for it becomes important.”
Researchers have used risky stem cell transplants to successfully cure two more people. Loreen Willenberg, a 67-year-old California woman diagnosed with HIV in 1992, was the only other patient in history who did not receive a transplant.
