Researchers announced this week that a man in Germany has officially been cured of HIV, making him the fifth person to ever have been cured of the virus, which was previously considered a lifelong infection. The details of the successful treatment of the 53-year-old man, referred to as “the Dusseldorf patient” to protect his privacy, were announced back in 2019, but after four years of negative tests, researchers now consider him officially cured.
Senior physician at Dusseldorf University Dr. Bjorn-Erik Ole Jensen published the findings of his team’s research in the journal “Nature Medicine.” "It’s really cured, and not just, you know, long-term remission," Jensen says. "This obviously positive symbol makes hope, but there's a lot of work to do."
The Dusseldorf patient is the fifth person to be cured of HIV after the Berlin patient in 2009, the London patient in 2019, and a pair of U.S. patients in 2022. All five patients were cured by a high-risk stem cell transplant that effectively replaces the person’s immune system. Dr. Todd Ellerin from South Shore Health in Massachusetts says the procedure is still too risky to offer as a cure to most HIV patients, but he’s encouraged by the research, saying, “It is obviously a step forward in advancing the science and having us sort of understanding, in some ways, what it takes to cure HIV."
Source: ABC News