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Two HIV-positive patients who underwent a bone marrow transplant for cancer have been able to come off medication because they still show no sign of being infected with the virus.
Last year scientists announced that one man showed no detectable HIV in his blood cells for two years while the other has been clear for four. But at this point they were still taking antiretroviral therapy.
But now both patients have come of the therapy – one 15 weeks ago and the other seven weeks ago – and still show no signs of the virus.
The Harvard University researchers said it was too early to say the men had been cured, but said it was an encouraging sign that the virus hadn’t returned in their blood after drug treatment had ended.
Timothy Henrich and Daniel Kuritzkes of the Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, announced last year that blood samples taken from the men - who both had blood cancers -showed no traces of the HIV virus eight months after they received bone marrow transplants to replace cancerous blood cells with healthy donor cells, according to a report in Medical Express.
The latest results were presented at an international AIDS conference in Malaysia last Wednesday.
The HIV virus may be hiding in other organs such as the liver, spleen or brain and could return months later, he warned.
Further testing of the men's cells, plasma and tissue for at least a year will help give a clearer picture on the full impact of the transplant on HIV persistence, he said.
The first person reported to be cured of HIV, American Timothy Ray Brown, underwent a stem cell transplant in 2007 to treat his leukemia. He was reported by his German doctors to have been cured of HIV two years later.
Brown's doctors used a donor who had a rare genetic mutation that provides resistance against HIV. So far, no one has observed similar results using ordinary donor cells such as those given to the two Boston patients.
Kuritzkes said the patients will be put back on the drugs if there is a viral rebound.
A rebound will show that other sites are important reservoirs of infectious virus and new approaches to measuring these reservoirs will be needed in developing a cure, Henrich said.
‘These findings clearly provide important new information that might well alter the current thinking about HIV and gene therapy,’ Kevin Robert Frost, chief executive of The Foundation of AIDS Research, said in a statement.
'While stem cell transplantation is not a viable option for people with HIV on a broad scale because of its costs and complexity, these new cases could lead us to new approaches to treating, and ultimately even eradicating, HIV.'
Two HIV-positive patients who underwent a bone marrow transplant for cancer have been able to come off medication because they still show no sign of being infected with the virus.
Last year scientists announced that one man showed no detectable HIV in his blood cells for two years while the other has been clear for four. But at this point they were still taking antiretroviral therapy.
But now both patients have come of the therapy – one 15 weeks ago and the other seven weeks ago – and still show no signs of the virus.
Both men had suffered with blood cancer and had
undergone bone marrow transplants (marrow being prepared pictured) to
treat that disease. No one expected the procedure to have such a
dramatic and beneficial side effect
The Harvard University researchers said it was too early to say the men had been cured, but said it was an encouraging sign that the virus hadn’t returned in their blood after drug treatment had ended.
Timothy Henrich and Daniel Kuritzkes of the Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, announced last year that blood samples taken from the men - who both had blood cancers -showed no traces of the HIV virus eight months after they received bone marrow transplants to replace cancerous blood cells with healthy donor cells, according to a report in Medical Express.
The latest results were presented at an international AIDS conference in Malaysia last Wednesday.
The HIV virus may be hiding in other organs such as the liver, spleen or brain and could return months later, he warned.
Further testing of the men's cells, plasma and tissue for at least a year will help give a clearer picture on the full impact of the transplant on HIV persistence, he said.
Experts say it is too early to say that the men are cured as virus (pictured) could be hiding in organs
The first person reported to be cured of HIV, American Timothy Ray Brown, underwent a stem cell transplant in 2007 to treat his leukemia. He was reported by his German doctors to have been cured of HIV two years later.
Brown's doctors used a donor who had a rare genetic mutation that provides resistance against HIV. So far, no one has observed similar results using ordinary donor cells such as those given to the two Boston patients.
Kuritzkes said the patients will be put back on the drugs if there is a viral rebound.
A rebound will show that other sites are important reservoirs of infectious virus and new approaches to measuring these reservoirs will be needed in developing a cure, Henrich said.
‘These findings clearly provide important new information that might well alter the current thinking about HIV and gene therapy,’ Kevin Robert Frost, chief executive of The Foundation of AIDS Research, said in a statement.
'While stem cell transplantation is not a viable option for people with HIV on a broad scale because of its costs and complexity, these new cases could lead us to new approaches to treating, and ultimately even eradicating, HIV.'
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