Argentinian woman cured of HIV without treatment

The woman, from the northeastern Argentine town of Esperanza, appears to have eradicated the deadly virus from her body, which would make her the second documented case of HIV to be cured without the help of medication , stem cell therapy or other experimental treatments. according to research published in the peer-reviewed medical journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

Researchers in Argentina and Massachusetts, United States, collected blood samples from the patient from 2017 to 2020, meticulously analyzing the DNA of more than a billion cells for HIV virus cells. The study was led by Dr Xu Yu of the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT and Harvard.

“This gives us hope that the human immune system is strong enough to control HIV and eliminate all functional viruses,” said Dr Yu. “Time will tell, but we believe she has achieved a cure. sterilant. “

Researchers still don’t know how the patient’s body apparently got rid of the HIV virus – one of the most difficult to eradicate from the human body. “We believe that it is a combination of different immune mechanisms: cytotoxic T cells (cells that destroy cells infected by the virus, tumor cells and tissue transplants) are probably involved, innate immune mechanisms may also have contributed, “Yu wrote in an email.

Scanning electron micrograph of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), grown in cultured lymphocytes. (credit: VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)

Both are among the “elite controllers” of the HIV virus – about 1 in 200 people living with HIV whose own immune system is somehow able to suppress the replication of the virus to very low levels without antiretrovirals. Dr. Yu wrote an article on the so-called elite controllers.

“This article is a great showcase of the level of sophistication of the analyzes that can be performed now,” said Paula Cannon, a molecular microbiologist who studies HIV and gene editing at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of California. from South. STAT publication. “Finding someone who is an elite controller who not only currently has no HIV RNA viruses in their body, but who also doesn’t seem to have the potential to do so at any time in the future, doesn’t isn’t really surprising, but it’s exciting. “

HIV is the virus that causes the autoimmune deficiency disease known as AIDS, which makes the human immune system very susceptible to other diseases such as COVID-19. Around 38 million people are living with HIV globally and around 690,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses worldwide last year.