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First patient with HIV is cured by umbilical cord blood transplant
The middle-aged woman suffered from blood cancer and needed a transplant of cells from a compatible donor.
The patient was first diagnosed with HIV and then with Leukemia. As an initial procedure, blood was inserted from the umbilical cord, as part of the cancer treatment.
The donation was made by a person compatible with blood from a close relative and this gave him temporary immune defenses while the transplant was performed.
In the course of 14 months, the patient has not presented detectable levels of HIV, despite the fact that she stopped treatment with antiretrovirals, which means that she is free of the virus and if she continues like this, she would be considered cured.
On day 17, after receiving the transplant, she was discharged and did not have any graft-versus-host disease. This infection is detected when the donor graft causes damage.
The researchers showed details of the patient at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections held in Denver, Colorado.
Importance of umbilical cord blood
Umbilical fluid is made up of placenta and blood from the umbilical cord. In addition, it has 10 times more cells than the spinal cord.
These cells are younger and less exposed to environmental factors and disease, according to the Parent's Guide to Cord Blood Foundation.
Obtaining umbilical blood is painless and safe, which makes adult stem cells more available.
previous cases
Timothy Brown is known as the 'Berlin patient', being the first to be cured of HIV by bone marrow transplant as part of his leukemia treatment.
The American has managed to get doctors around the world to put this achievement into practice in other HIV-positive patients.
A group in Spain attempted to perform such a procedure, but with an umbilical cord cell transplant. This process had gratifying results, since it has been successful and it is the first time that the elimination of the AIDS virus has been achieved.
This patient was called a 'Barcelona patient', a 37-year-old man infected in 2009 with HIV.
