5th Person Confirmed To Be Cured of HIV

Researchers are announcing that a 53-year-old man in Germany has been cured of HIV. Referred to as “the Dusseldorf patient” to protect his privacy, researchers said he is the fifth confirmed case of an HIV cure. Although the details of his successful treatment were first announced at a conference in 2019, researchers could not confirm he had been officially cured at that time. Today, researchers announced the Dusseldorf patient still has no detectable virus in his body, even after stopping his HIV medication four years ago. “It’s really cure, and not just, you know, long term remission,” said Dr. Bjorn-Erik Ole Jensen, who presented details of the case in a new publication in “Nature Medicine.”

“This obviously positive symbol makes hope, but there’s a lot of work to do,” Jensen said. For most people, HIV is a lifelong infection, and the virus is never fully eradicated. Thanks to modern medication, people with HIV can live long and healthy lives. The Dusseldorf patient joins a small group of people who have been cured under extreme circumstances after a stem cell transplant, typically only performed in cancer patients who don’t have any other options. A stem cell transplant is a high-risk procedure that effectively replaces a person’s immune system. The primary goal is to cure someone’s cancer, but the procedure has also led to an HIV cure in a handful of cases.