A 35-year-old Brazilian man who went into long-term remission after being treated for less than a year with an intensified multi-drug cocktail of AIDS medicines, has raised hope of a potential breakthrough on Tuesday July 7.
The man who tested HIV positive in 2012 was treated with an antiretroviral therapy or ART base that was improved with additional antiretrovirals, plus a medication called nicotinamide (a vitamin B3 form).
His accelerated care was stopped after 48 weeks, and researchers who announced their results at this week’s virtual International Aids Society conference said the patient has gone on without HIV medication for more than 57 weeks now and continues to test negative for HIV antibodies.
Dr. Ricardo Diaz of Sao Paulo University in Brazil, who led the study, said he was “trying to wake up the virus” and boosting the ability of the immune system to eliminate it once it’s flushed out of the hiding place.
Diaz said;
“We can’t search the entire body, but by the best evidence, we do not have infected cells.
“I think it’s very promising. This patient might be cured, but it will take more time to know.”
Professor Sharon Lewin, an expert on HIV and infectious diseases at the University of Melbourne who has not been involved in the study, said it was important that the patient has no antibodies.
She said;
“When someone is infected with a virus they make antibodies. And antibodies don’t budge, even when you’re on treatment and there’s no detectable viral load. But this showed he had no antibodies which is supportive of him being cured.
“It’s interesting, but it’s hard to know how significant it is when it’s just a single case. I’d also like to know what happened to the other patients.”
In the past five years, after undergoing high-risk stem cell bone marrow transplants to treat cancer, only two people known as “Berlin” and “London” patients seem to have been cured of the illness.
Since the AIDS epidemic started in the 1980s, more than 75 million people have been infected. Thirty-three million people had died from the infection already.
