Scientists claim that They identified a second patient whose body appeared to be completely free of the HIV virus caused by AIDS in a natural way, which makes them hope that at some point they will probably find a way to cure more people of the virus.
The patient had no previous stem cell transplant or other treatment, yet eight years after diagnosis showed no signs of infection.
Something similar has been repeated only once in the past.
According to scientists at MIT and Harvard Universities and Massachusetts General Hospital, the patient's body no longer shows any traces of the virus genome.
Researchers led by Dr. Su Yu, who named the patient "Esperanza patient" (city of Argentina), made the relevant publication in the American medical journal "Annals of Internal Medicine". As they point out, they analyzed almost 1,2 million blood cells and 503 million tissue cells, without finding the slightest trace of HIV.
During infection, HIV inserts copies of its genome into the DNA of human cells, creating a "reservoir" to effectively hide it from anti-HIV drugs and patients' immune system reactions.
In most patients, new virus particles are constantly springing up from this "reservoir" and as anti-retroviral therapy (ART) cannot eliminate the "reservoir", daily medication is necessary to suppress the virus.
But some patients have an immune system capable of suppressing HIV without the need for drugs, because, although they still have the viral "reservoir", they have killer T cells that are able to suppress the virus on their own, without drugs.
In 2020, Dr. Su Yu's research team first announced in the journal Nature Located a 67-year-old woman, who was diagnosed with HIV 30 years ago and named "San Francisco Patient", in which there was solid evidence that the "reservoir" had been eliminated, as there were no complete traces of the viral genome in her DNA.
Analyzing billions of cells from that patient found no trace of HIV, so the patient was considered the first known case of complete cure in the world without having preceded a stem cell transplant, as had happened with the "Berlin patient".
Timothy Ray Brown was the first to got rid of HIV, 13 years ago, after he did bone marrow transplant from a donor with HIV-resistant genes. The transplant resulted in Brown being cured of both his cancer and HIV. A similar case of Adam Castilejo or "London patient" later became known.
The researchers did not rule out the possibility that There are other cases of HIV patients who have been treated on their own but have not yet become known. If scientists fully understand the immune mechanisms behind such self-treatments, they will probably be able to develop new types of therapies that will "teach" the immune system and other patients to mimic such reactions against HIV.
As Yu stated, "We are now looking forward to the possibility of vaccinating this type of immunity in people undergoing ART treatment, with the aim of training their immune systems so that they can control the virus without ART."
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