A woman participating in a New York study at the Weill Cornell Medicine center became the third person in history to be successfully cured of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome).
Additionally, the test patient also beat her acute myeloid leukemia, a severe form of blood cancer for which there’s currently no available cure. The program applies stem cell transplantation and involves 25 people with HIV. The study subjects will undergo a transplant procedure using umbilical cord stem cells donated during human births and are then monitored to see if their status changes.
In the case of the cured woman, whose identity remains undisclosed at this time, her tests returned 100% clean of virus and antibodies only 17 days after the transplantation procedure. She immediately stopped taking antiretroviral and anti-cancer drugs, and after 51 months since the operation took place in August 2017, there are still no signs of relapse.
Currently, the only hope for people who suffer from HIV and leukemia is bone marrow transplantation, which is very limited due to human leukocyte antigen incompatibilities that make finding a suitable donor statistically improbable.
Stem cells contain high-quality hematopoietic units that cover a broad spectrum of bio-compatibility with donor recipients since the organism of babies is too immature to develop characteristics that would undermine adaptation. As such, even in cases where the biomarkers partially match, the results can still be miraculous.
The leader of the study, Dr. Koen van Besien, stated that at least 50 people per year in the United States could benefit from stem cell transplantation to find cure for HIV. Globally, 38 million people are living with the perilous disease, and it wouldn’t be far-fetched to suggest that with the expansion of stem cell programs, all of them could be absolved of their health problems.
Article Credit: Future US Inc
Image by Darwin Laganzon from Pixabay
