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The man, known as the Geneva Patient, has become the sixth person in the world to achieve stable remission for HIV infection, MIR 24 reports with reference to AFP.
Five people in the world are believed to have been cured of HIV. These are patients from Berlin, London, Düsseldorf, New York and the city of Hope in California. All of them also suffered from cancer and underwent bone marrow transplantation. Donor stem cells contained a mutation in the CCR5 gene that blocks HIV from entering human cells.
The Geneva patient, who was diagnosed with HIV in 1990, did not receive donor material with a mutated gene, as in previous cases. He also received a stem cell transplant in 2018 to treat a particularly aggressive form of leukemia. However, 20 months after the man stopped taking antiretroviral drugs, no traces of the virus were found in his body.
The researchers called the case of remission "promising", although it is possible that the disease could return.