An HIV patient has said it seems like ‘winning the lottery twice’ after being virtually cured of the disease with the assistance of his brother.
The 64-year-old, generally known as the ‘Oslo patient’, has been in remission for five years after receiving a stem cell transplant.
His brother, the donor, was found to be proof against the virus, which if untreated will be deadly.
While treatments can keep HIV at bay, the virus stays extremely difficult to permanently cure as it could actually remain hidden in cells.
The Oslo patient was originally diagnosed with HIV in 2006, when he was aged 44.
He was then found to have myelodysplastic syndrome, a fatal cancer of the blood, in 2017.
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But, in a miraculous turn of events, doctors struck gold after they turned to the patient’s older brother, was found to hold the precise gene, generally known as CCR5, which blocks HIV from entering the system.
The resistant mutation is carried only by around one in 100 people in Europe.
Even when one does discover a donor with the proper variant, the stem cell transplant is just suitable for patients with each HIV and blood cancer.
Just two years after the procedure, the person stopped taking anti-retroviral drugs, which had until then helped keep his symptoms at bay.
Nonetheless samples of his blood, bone marrow and gut were found to haven’t any trace of the virus.
Anders Eivind Myhre from the Oslo University Hospital said doctors were quite certain the Norwegian patient had been cured ‘for all practical purposes’.
The patient had said the invention was like ‘winning the lottery twice’, he told AFP.
He added that the patient was now well and has ‘more energy than he knows what to do with’.
It’s believed to be the primary time a HIV patient has received a stem cell donation from a member of the family.
Greater than 3,000 Britons were diagnosed with HIV in 2024, with the disease having claimed the lives of 643 people within the UK the identical 12 months.
The primary person to be officially cleared of HIV was Timothy Ray Brown who was declared cured back in 2008.
He became generally known as the ‘Berlin patient’ after the town where he was treated for leukaemia.
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