Second patient cured of HIV in London using stem cell transplant treatment

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Second patient cured of HIV in London using stem cell transplant treatment
Second patient cured of HIV in London using stem cell transplant treatment

London : A London man has become the second patient who has been cured of HIV using stem cell transplant treatment, said doctors.

The so-called "London Patient", a cancer sufferer originally from Venezuela, made headlines last year when researchers at the University of Cambridge reported they had found no trace of the AIDS-causing virus in his blood for 18 months.

His case has been published in The Lancet HIV. The lead author of the study said that his new results are even more remarkable as they confirm that the patient has been cured completely.

"We've tested a sizeable set of sites that HIV likes to hide in and they are all pretty much negative for an active virus," Ravindra Gupta told AFP.

The patient, who revealed his identity this week as Adam Castillejo, 40, was diagnosed with HIV in 2003 and since then he had been on medication to keep the disease in check since 2012.

Later in 2012, he was diagnosed with advanced Hodgkin's Lymphoma, deadly cancer.

In 2016, he underwent a bone marrow transplant to treat blood cancer, receiving stem cells from donors with a genetic mutation present in less than one percent of Europeans that prevent HIV from taking hold.

With the success, he has become only the second patient to be cured of HIV after American Timothy Brown, known as the "Berlin Patient", recovered from HIV in 2011 following similar treatment.

However, the researchers have made it clear that it cannot be generalized as a treatment for the disease that kills around 1 million people every year.