New York woman appears cured of HIV after stem cell transplant
NEW YORK -- In a breakthrough in the fight against AIDS, a New York woman appears to have been cured of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Scientists say the patient -- a middle-aged, mixed race woman -- received a transplant of stem cells from umbilical cord blood to treat her leukemia.
The woman, who has been living without HIV since 2017 and is no longer taking drugs to suppress the virus, could be the first woman to be cured of the virus.
"It was done with a slightly different type of transplant, that meaning the cord blood transplant instead of the full allogenic stem cell transplant that was used in the previous cases. So this gives, you know, an additional opportunity for these very specific and selected cases, showing that this approach also might work," said Dr. Francesca Cossarini, infection disease expert at Mount Sinai.
Earlier cases of HIV being cured include two men in Germany and one in the United Kingdom. There is also one case of long-term remission in a man treated in Los Angeles. All had received stem cell transplants from bone marrow to treat cancer and HIV.