A fourth person has been "cured" of HIV, but the dangerous procedure for patients also battling cancer may be little comfort to the tens of millions of people living with the virus.
The 66-year-old man, named the "City of Hope" patient after the Californian center where he was treated, was declared in remission in the lead-up to the International AIDS Conference.
He is the second person to be cured this year after researchers said in February that a US woman had also gone into remission.
The City of Hope patient, like the Berlin and London patients before him, had a bone marrow transplant to cure cancer.
The Duesseldorf patient has been said to have reached remission, which could bring the number to five.
The City of Hope's infectious disease specialist told Agence France-Presse that his success could be good for older HIV sufferers who have cancer.
The research on the patient was announced at a pre- conference but has not been peer reviewed.
The patient said that when he was diagnosed with HIV in 1988 he thought it was a death sentence.
He said in a City of Hope statement that he never thought he'd live to see the day that he no longer has HIV. I am very thankful.
The patient told Dickter about the stigma he experienced during the early days of AIDS.
She said that many of his friends and loved ones succumbed to the disease.
She said that he was part of early trials of antiretroviral therapy, which now allows many of the 38 million with HIV to live with the virus.
He was the longest patient who went into remission.
After being diagnosed with leukemia, he received a bone marrow transplant with stem cells from an unrelated donor with a rare genetic abnormality that made them resistant to HIV.
After getting the vaccine for COVID-19 in March 2021, he was free of both HIV and cancer.
Older HIV patients with cancer may be able to get the treatment with reduced-intensity Chemo.
She said that it's not a suitable option for most people with HIV.
Steven Deeks, an HIV expert at the University of California, San Francisco who was not involved in the research, said the first thing you do when you get a bone marrow transplant is destroy your own immune system.
He told Agence France-Presse that he wouldn't do this if he didn't have cancer.
A 59-year-old Spanish woman with HIV has kept her viral load in check for 15 years despite stopping her antiretroviral therapy.
Sharon Lewin, president-elect of the International AIDS Society, said that it was not the same as the City of Hope patient because the virus remained at a very low level.
The Holy Grail of HIV research is a cure.
There have been a few individual cure cases before and the two presented today provide continued hope for people living with HIV.
It's like finding a needle in a haystack to identify HIV in an individual cell.
The new research presented at the conference was described by Deeks as an "unprecedented deep dive into the biology of theinfecting cell".
A cell with HIV has a number of characteristics.
It is harder to kill and harder to detect than most.
This is the reason HIV is a lifelong disease.
He said that the case of the City of Hope patient offered a potential path to a cure.
Deeks thinks that if you can get rid of HIV and get rid of CCR5 then you can cure someone.
We're not there yet, but it's possible to give someone a shot in the arm that will deliver anidase that will go into the cells and knock out the virus.
That is science fiction for now.
Agence France- Presse.
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