Timothy Ray Brown, the “Berlin patient,” was the first person reported to be cured of HIV. He has shown no signs of infection for five years since receiving a bone marrow transplant to treat leukemia. Now doctors are reporting that two more patients show no signs of HIV after receiving bone marrow transplants as treatment for lymphoma.
The two men received the transplants several years ago at the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center in Boston, researchers said at the AIDS Society Conference in Koala Lumpur today (July 3). Throughout the transplants and the recovery, the patients took anti-retroviral medication. But following extensive testing, they both recently went off their AIDS medicines. One of the patients has remained free of signs of HIV for the last seven weeks, while the other has remained HIV-free in the 15 weeks since he went off his medication.
“While these results are exciting, they do not yet indicate that the men have been cured,” said Timothy Henrich, one of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital doctors who treated the patients, according to The Guardian. “Long-term follow up of at least one year will be required to understand the full impact of a bone marrow transplant on HIV persistence.”…
