Hyderabad: A patient from United States suffering from both cancer and HIV has become the first woman and third person in the world to get completely cured of the AIDS causing virus.

While the treatment technique to cure HIV among all the three patients was risky, experimental and too expensive, it sure has raised a lot of hope of a future treatment technique that could be scalable and affordable for 3.7 crore (37 million) people in the world, 24 lakh in India, out of which 1.5 lakh are from Telangana, who are living with HIV.

The medical case of HIV remission in the US woman was presented by researchers from International Maternal Paediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials Network (IMPAACT), on February 14 in a medical conference on retroviruses in Denver, United States.

Previously, the first patient to be cured of HIV was popularly known as ‘Berlin Patient’, a Caucasian male who had cancer and HIV while the second patient was a ‘London Patient’, a Latino male, also with cancer and HIV. While the Berlin patient died in September, 2020 due to leukemia, the London patient, Adam Castllejo, who was treated by Professor of Clinical Microbiology, Dr Ravindra Gupta from University of Cambridge is still experiencing HIV remission for more than 30 months.

All the three patients, who had cancer and HIV, were completely cured of HIV through the experimental stem cell transplantation technique. Before passing away due to leukemia in September, 2020, the Berlin patient experienced HIV remission for 12 years and was deemed cured from HIV. The woman from US has been free from the AIDS causing virus for the past 14 months.

The cure for HIV is not a drug or a vaccine but it consists of extracting stem cells from people who are resistant to HIV and then transplanting them among the HIV positive patients. The HIV-resistant stem cells then gradually work to replace the non-resistant cells in the patients.

Does this study bring promise to thousands of people living with HIV in Telangana?

“The study itself is prohibitively expensive and experimental in nature. It only ends-up creating false hopes among people living with HIV. All the three patients had cancer and HIV and needed stem cell transplants. It was accidental that they were cured of HIV because they were receiving treatment for cancer,” says Dr Additional Project Director, TS State AIDS Control Society (TSSACS), Dr G Anna Prasanna Kumari.

Senior doctors here also point out that at present, the Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART), which is administered to HIV positive patients has become far more efficient.

“Gone are the days when HIV positive patients used to struggle with the cocktail of drugs, which are part of the ART therapy. The medicines in ART have evolved and are very efficient. In fact, if HIV patients properly adhere to the ART therapy, 90 per cent of them can lead quality life with normal life expectancy,” Superintendent, Chest Hospital, Dr Mahaboob Khan, who treats TB patients with HIV, says.

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