The so-called “London Patient”, a cancer sufferer originally from Venezuela, made headlines last year when researchers at the University of Cambridge reported they had found no trace of the AIDS-causing virus in his blood for 18 months.
The patient, who revealed his identity this week as Adam Castillejo, 40, was diagnosed with HIV in 2003 and had been on medication to keep the disease in check since 2012.In 2016 he underwent a bone marrow transplant to treat blood cancer, receiving stem cells from donors with a genetic mutation present in less than one percent of Europeans that prevents HIV from taking hold.
Gupta said the tests uncovered HIV “fossils” — fragments of the virus that were now incapable of reproducing, and were therefore safe.“It’s quite hard to imagine that all trace of a virus that infects billions of cells was eliminated from the body.”Researchers cautioned that the breakthrough did not constitute a generalized cure for HIV, which leads to nearly one million deaths every year.
“You’d have to weigh up the fact that there’s a 10-percent mortality rate from doing a stem-cell transplant against what the risk of death would be if we did nothing,” he said.
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