The stem cell transplant that can ‘cure’ HIV is only an option for patients who also have blood cancer – Copyright AFP\/File MARCO BERTORELLO<\/p>\n
Daniel Lawler<\/p>\n
A Norwegian man has been effectively cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant from his brother, doctors announced on Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The patient\u2019s brother happened to carry a rare, virus-blocking genetic mutation.<\/p>\n
The 63-year-old man, dubbed the \u201cOslo patient\u201d, is the latest in around 10 people worldwide who have gone into long-term remission from HIV after receiving a transplant to treat unrelated blood cancer.<\/p>\n
The high-risk procedure normally requires a donor to have a specific mutation of their CCR5 gene, which blocks HIV from entering the body\u2019s cells.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Only around one percent of people in northern Europe have the necessary mutation.<\/p>\n
The Oslo patient, who had been living with HIV since 2006, was diagnosed with a fatal blood cancer called myelodysplastic syndrome in 2017.<\/p>\n
His doctors searched for a donor who would help treat both. When they couldn\u2019t find one, they chose the man\u2019s elder brother.<\/p>\n
However, on the day of the transplant in 2020, the doctors were stunned to discover that the brother carried the CCR5 mutation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had no idea\u2026 That was amazing,\u201d doctor Anders Eivind Myhre of the Oslo University Hospital told AFP.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u2018Winning the lottery twice\u2019 \u2013<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The patient said \u201cit was like winning the lottery twice\u201d, added Myhre, who was also the lead author of a study describing the case in Nature Microbiology.<\/p>\n
Two years after the transplant, the patient stopped taking the anti-retroviral drugs which had been reducing the level of HIV in his body.<\/p>\n
The researchers found no trace of the virus in samples of the man\u2019s blood, gut and bone marrow.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor all practical purposes, we are quite certain that he is cured,\u201d Myhre said.<\/p>\n
Now the Oslo patient, whose name was not revealed, is \u201chaving a great time\u201d and has more energy than he knows what to do with, Myhre said.<\/p>\n
The painful and potentially dangerous transplant procedure is for people who have both HIV and deadly blood cancer so is not a feasible option for the millions of people living with the virus across the world.<\/p>\n
However, researchers believe that studying these rare cases will reveal more about how HIV works in the hope of finding a cure for all patients.<\/p>\n
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\u2013 \u2018No longer a patient\u2019 \u2013<\/p>\n
The Oslo patient is the first person to receive a transplant from a family member.<\/p>\n
The patient\u2019s immune system had been \u201ccompletely replaced\u201d by the donor\u2019s, sqaid study co-author Marius Troseid of the University of Oslo.<\/p>\n
It was the first time this had been observed in a cured patient\u2019s bone marrow and gut, he told AFP.<\/p>\n
Even before the researchers found out the brother had a CCR5 mutation, they had some hope that the Oslo patient\u2019s HIV could be cured.<\/p>\n
That is because in 2024 it was revealed that the so-called \u201cnext Berlin patient\u201d entered long-term remission despite receiving a transplant that did not have two copies of the mutated gene.<\/p>\n
The original Berlin patient, Timothy Ray Brown, was the first person declared cured of HIV back in 2008. Patients in London, New York, Geneva, Duesseldorf and elsewhere followed.<\/p>\n
Given the Oslo patient\u2019s robust health, Troseid suggested that his nickname was no longer suitable.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Oslo patient is perhaps no longer a patient. At least he doesn\u2019t feel like it,\u201d Troseid said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The stem cell transplant that can ‘cure’ HIV is only an option for patients who also have blood…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[85],"tags":[393,18198,157,156,5356],"class_list":["post-60199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oslo","tag-health","tag-hiv","tag-norway","tag-oslo","tag-research"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116398569910883451","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}