Until now, a single person was known to have contracted the immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and got cured without the need for treatment. But according to recent and exhilarating news, there’s another patient who had been going through the same process. Perhaps the even more intriguing fact is that nobody knows how the latter patient’s body was capable of removing HIV.
The Hill informs us that a 30-year old woman from Argentina is the new person in question who got rid of HIV from her body naturally. Oddly enough, the woman showed no signs of HIV eight years after getting the initial diagnosis.
Xu Yu, a co-author of the study, declared for CNN:
Examples of such a cure that develops naturally suggest that current efforts to find a cure for HIV infection are not elusive, and that the prospects of getting to an ‘AIDS-free generation’ may ultimately be successful.
Also according to CNN, Yu and her colleagues analyzed between 2017 and 2020 blood samples belonging to the HIV patient.
Yu tried to explain to CNN how the cure of the woman from Argentina was possible. Although the curing itself is very mysterious, the scientist is betting on a “combination of different immune mechanisms.” Yu also added for the same publication regarding the importance of the achievement:
Expanding the numbers of individuals with possible sterilizing cure status would facilitate our discovery of the immune factors that lead to this sterilizing cure in broader population of HIV infected individuals.
The Mayo Clinic tells us how HIV can spread: through sexual contact (either normal, oral, or anal), blood transfusions, sharing needles, during pregnancy or delivery, as well as through breastfeeding. Obviously, it is a good idea to always protect yourself before engaging in a sexual act.
The new study was published in Annals of Internal Medicine.
