Can HIV Be Cured?

A London man has been cured of HIV after undergoing a bone marrow transplant. The “London Patient”, who has not yet been identified, was diagnosed with the virus in 2003, but did not receive the treatment until May of 2016 after also being diagnosed with cancer.

To treat the cancer, the patient received bone marrow from a donor who carried a gene mutation naturally resistant to the HIV virus. After this, and other subsequent procedures, the London Patient was able to stop taking the antiretroviral drugs in September 2017 and has been virus free for over a year.

Believe it or not, this is actually the second person to successfully undergo this procedure. Timothy Ray Brown, famously known as the “Berlin Patient”, was diagnosed with HIV in 1995. He too was diagnosed with cancer, acute myeloid leukemia, and underwent a bone marrow transplant receiving bone marrow with the same gene mutation as the London Patient. Brown has been free of the HIV virus since 2008.