appears the reservoir was eliminated. About 14 months after the marrow transplant, the HIV medicines were stopped.
The patient has been in remission from the cancer and has been off HIV medicines for over 18 months with no virus detected anywhere. In addition to not finding any virus hiding in the body, the patient has no antibodies to HIV, which further supports there is no virus hiding out in the body.
Many aspects of this case were seen in the Berlin patient, Timothy Brown. This patient was suppressed on HIV therapy for many years but then developed Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML). Treatment of this cancer also required stem cell transplantation. The patient also received cancer chemotherapy. When the cancer returned several months later, a second transplant was needed and the patient received radiation therapy.
The donor of the stem cells in both of the transplants for this patient was selected for the mutation to CCR5 that made his lymphocytes resistant to HIV infection. The leukemia was cured after the second treatment. This patient has been off HIV meds with no virus detectable in any part of the body for over 10 years.
Important similarities link these two cases. It is critically important that the stem cells they received came from donors with the mutation in the CCR5, protecting these cells form