THE FIRST woman with HIV has been cured of the virus after having cancer treatment.

American scientists say the unnamed woman has been free of the virus for 14 months, without taking medication.

She is the first woman but fourth HIV patient to be effectively cured of HIV, as experts find novel ways to wipe the disease.

The “New York patient,” as the woman is being called, received her treatment at New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City.

She was diagnosed with HIV in 2013 and leukaemia in 2017, according to experts who presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunisitic Infections in Denver.

Like a small handful of HIV patients who have cancer, the middle-aged woman received treatment that scientists hoped would fight both diseases at once.

The mixed-race woman received a haploidentical cord transplantation, which uses umbilical cord blood from an infant donor, and bone marrow from an adult donor.

Both donors are naturally resistant to HIV due to having a rare genetic mutation. 

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When these cells are injected into the body, they mature into a new and healthy immune system, replacing the damaged cells within the body.

The woman’s body reacted well to the treatment, the doctors report, and she quickly saw positive results. 

She has been in remission from her leukaemia for more than four years, NBC reported.

Three years after her transplant, doctors stopped her HIV treatment and 14 months later, she still has experienced no resurgent virus.

“I’m excited that it’s turned out so well for her,” said Dr Yvonne Bryson, a paediatric infectious disease specialist at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine who has been studying the woman.

Dr Bryson favours the word “remission” over “cure” – but says the New York patient will be considered cured once a few more years pass and there are no signs of active virus.

Growing cures

Researchers said that this type of treatment may be available for more HIV patients – up to 50 a year in the US.

However, it is unethical to offer it to patients unless they have a potentially fatal cancer or other condition, given that stem cell transplants are highly risky and complex. 

For many of these cancer patients, a stem cell transplant from a donor is their only chance of survival.

The latest case is part of a large US study following 25 people with HIV who are to undergo the same procedure using stem cells from adults and an umbilical cord.

Dr Deborah Persaud, a paediatric infectious disease specialist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said “we’re very excited” about the new case of possible HIV cure.

But she said the stem cell treatment method is “still not a feasible strategy for all but a handful of the millions of people living with HIV”.

Two other HIV patients who were given the “all-clear” received adult stem cells, which are more frequently used in bone marrow transplants.

Timothy Ray Brown, otherwise known as the “Berlin patient”, and Adam Castillejo, the “London patient”, made headlines as the first to ever be cured of the virus.

Timothy, who died in 2020, made medical history after giving the world hope that a HIV cure could be possible.

"This is now the third report of a cure in this setting, and the first in a woman living with HIV," Sharon Lewin, President-Elect of the International AIDS Society, said in a statement.

A fourth man from Germany – referred to as the "Düsseldorf patient" – also joined the rare club of successfully cured HIV patients in 2019.

Other patients have miraculously cleared their HIV infection naturally, and are known as “elite controllers”.

Making up just 0.5 per cent of those who have HIV, experts describe elite controllers as people who somehow tame the virus without any aid at all, having undetectable levels of HIV in the blood. 

Two that have been described by medics are an anonymous 30-year-old woman nicknamed the “Esperanza patient”, from Argentina, and Loreen Willenberg, otherwise known as the “San Francisco patient”. 

What is HIV?

HIV is a virus that attacks the immune system, and weakens your ability to fight infections and disease.

AIDS is the final stage of HIV infection, when your body can no longer fight life-threatening infections.

With treatment, most people with HIV do not ever develop AIDS.

The human body can’t get rid of HIV and no effective HIV cure exists. It stays with somebody for life.

However, by taking HIV medicine (called antiretroviral therapy or ART), people with HIV can live long and healthy lives and don't pass HIV to their sexual partners. 

Those that take their medication daily and get an "undetectable viral load" have effectively no risk of sexually transmitting HIV.

Most infected people experience a short illness, similar to flu, two to six weeks after coming into contact with HIV.

Symptoms can include:

• Fever
• Sore throat
• Body rash
• Tiredness
• Joint and/or muscle pain
• Swollen glands

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