In a rare case, woman’s body rids itself of HIV without medication

As a norm, patients infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) need life-long antiretroviral therapy (ART). The ART is a combination of antiretroviral drugs to maximally suppress the HIV virus, and stop progression of the disease.

Dr. Xu Yu, of the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, led the study. She told CNN that the study shows a cure can also be reached during natural infection, in the absence of bone marrow transplants (or any type of treatment at all).

The Argentinian patient is an “elite controller”, a term used to refer to those whose immune systems have the ability to supress HIV without medical support. According to CNN, the 30-year-old hailing from Esperanza city was diagnosed with HIV in March 2013.

The report says that the patient started no antiretroviral treatment until 2019, when she became pregnant. She then began treatment with the drugs tenofovir, emtricitabine, and raltegravir for six months during her second and third trimesters, the researchers noted. After delivering a healthy HIV-negative baby, she stopped the therapy, it adds.

In 2020, it was reported that Loreen Willenberg, a 66-year-old hailing from California, has become the first person globally to be cured of HIV without medical interventions.

Prior to this, two others — Timothy Brown of Palm Springs, California, and Adam Castillejo of London — had been cured of HIV by undergoing risky bone marrow transplants for cancer. The transplants wiped out the infected cells and left them with immune systems resistant to the virus.

Nearly 38 million people worldwide are living with HIV and 680,000 have died from AIDS-related illness, according to UN AIDS statistics in 2020.

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