Lucía Pardinas Del Águila, Victoria Perales Arroyo, Patricia Pérez Guijorro, Álvaro Nieto Blanco.
October 16th 2018.
Scientists from the Institute for AIDS Research IrsiCaixa in Barcelona and the Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid have managed to remove the virus from the blood and tissues of six patients using the treatment.
It consist on multifactorial mechanisms associated with radical reductions in HIV-1 reservoirs after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (allo-HSCT). Allo-HSCT resulted in a profound long-term reduction in the HIV reservoir. Such factors as stem cell source, conditioning, and a possible “graft-versus-HIV-reservoir” effect may have contributed.
But the research, published on the 14th of August in the Journal of Internal Medicine, said one patient now has no antibodies fighting the infection, suggesting it has been completely eliminated.The patients are keeping up their antiretroviral treatment, but researchers believe the virus may have been completely removed from their bodies.Researchers say the results could open the door to designing new treatments to cure HIV/AIDS.
The complication of this treatment is that you need allo-HSCT from a donor genetically similar to the patient and this is not easy to find. You may use the cells from the umbilical cord of the patients if he keep it when he was born, something that is not usual.IrsiCaixa researcher Maria Salgado, co-author of the study, together with Hospital Gregorio Marañón hermatologist Mi Kwon, explained that the reason current drugs do not cure HIV is due to the ‘viral reservoir’ which exists in cells infected by HIV. While treatment can make the virus ‘undetectable’ – meaning it cannot be passed on – the virus still remains dormant within cells and cannot be detected or destroyed by the immune system.
The latest study was inspired by Timothy Brown, ‘The Berlin Patient’ who had HIV eliminated from his body after undergoing a stem cell transplant to treat leukemia in 2008. Brown’s donor had a mutation which made their blood cells immune to HIV. He came off his antiretroviral treatment and to this day the HIV has not returned. He is considered to be the only person cured of the virus using this therapy.
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