Hope and many precautions. For the first time, a French patient is “potentially cured of HIV”, as the AP-HM services, the Marseille hospitals, enthusiastically and cautiously announced.
The patient remained anonymous. But information about him was shared, including his medical history. At about sixty years old, he lived “more than 26 years” with this incurable disease. Since October 2023 he has been living without retroviral treatment.
“What a message of hope”
This resident of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region was diagnosed with HIV in 1999. She underwent a bone marrow transplant in July 2020 after reporting leukemia acute, which could explain its remission. So that? Because the donor probably carried a mutation, transmitted to the patient, that protects against the disease.
“When we administer chemotherapy, we destroy all the cells of the HIV-infected person and give them the news that they are immune to HIV,” Olivia Zaegel-Faucher, head of the information and care center department, explained to the media. Human immunodeficiency and viral hepatitis.
“In this situation, she could potentially be cured of HIV,” he explained.
“It’s a big relief.”
Although anonymous, the French patient shared a message of hope and relief through his caregivers, as reported by France 3:
“After 26 years of illness, I never thought that one day I would hear news like this, it is a great relief and a message of hope for all the people who are in the same situation,” he declared before adding:
“I have a very special thought for the person who made this bone marrow donation, which allowed not only a total cure of leukemia, but even more to achieve what I thought was impossible: defeating HIV.”
As a message to other patients, he assures that “the road is long and full of obstacles,” but that with good care “we can still believe in it, see the dawn of recovery.”
A case almost impossible to replicate
Hope, yes. But so do precautions. The Frenchwoman is potentially the eighth HIV-positive person in the world who has hope of a cure. Seven other patients who have benefited from a bone marrow transplant are in this situation. One patient in Switzerland, three patients in Germany, two patients in the United States and one patient in England.
Could this be hope for treatment? Although hopeful, this news does not open the door to a large-scale solution. “The idea is to know how, based on this observation, we can extend it to other patients,” explained Raynier Devillier, head of the department of hematology and bone marrow transplantation at the Paoli-Calmettes Institute.
“Today, bone marrow transplant is not a treatment that we can assign to other HIV-infected patients, not without indications other than HIV,” he added.
Statistically, this situation is also unlikely. The chance of finding a 100% compatible donor for bone marrow donation is one in a million. While the mutation that protects against HIV is found in 1% of the world’s population. A small miracle.
Source: BFM TV
