A remarkable medical breakthrough could offer hope to millions of people living with HIV and AIDS around the world: A man named Timothy Ray Brown has been completely cured of the HIV virus.
Brown, an American living in Germany known in the medical world as “the Berlin Patient,” was treated for leukemia in 2007. He was known to be HIV-positive, so doctors didn’t believe his chances were good. They opted to give him a bone marrow transplant from a donor whose cells were resistant to the HIV virus, thanks to a genetic mutation that affects approximately one in 1,000 people.
More than two years after the risky procedure, Brown’s doctors have reported that their patient is cured completely. There is no sign of either his leukemia or the HIV virus. He’s stopped taking drugs to treat his HIV, and his immune system is behaving normally.
The Berlin Patient’s success is a stunning development—yet there are many hurdles to cross before the disease is cured entirely.
“The problem is most people with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa and this is hugely expensive, you have to find a matched donor, and it’s a pretty severe and painful operation,” Professor Andrew Sewell from the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Immunology at the University of Cardiff told BBC News.
It’s true that this treatment will not be an option for all HIV-positive patients. Nonetheless, its success is likely to pave the way for new therapies with more applications—and hopefully, one day, a cure for all who are affected by this horrific virus.
