{"id":44836,"date":"2023-03-10T07:20:35","date_gmt":"2023-03-10T07:20:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/?p=44836"},"modified":"2023-03-28T08:39:34","modified_gmt":"2023-03-28T08:39:34","slug":"the-dusseldorf-patient-hiv-cure-case-published-in-nature-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/44836","title":{"rendered":"The D\u00fcsseldorf patient HIV cure case published in Nature Medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Richard Jefferys, TAG<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On 20 February 2023, the news was awash with stories about the D\u00fcsseldorf Patient, one of five people considered likely cured of HIV after receipt of a stem cell transplant to treat a life-threatening cancer diagnosis. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As with all five reported cases to date, the stem cell donor was homozygous for the CCR5delta-32 mutation, which renders immune cells resistant to most HIV variants. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The media coverage has been prompted by the publication of a\u00a0detailed report in the journal\u00a0Nature Medicine\u00a0by Bj\u00f6rn-Erik Ole Jensen and colleagues. [1]<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The individual, who identified himself as Marc in an\u00a0interview with a Dutch news outlet in 2021, has now been off antiretroviral therapy (ART) for four years with no sign of HIV viral load rebound. His current health is reported to be good, although the paper makes clear his journey has been difficult having experienced two relapses of acute myeloid leukemia and reactivation of multiple chronic viral infections (cytomegalovirus, herpes simplex virus 2, human herpesvirus 8 and Epstein\u2013Barr virus). Mild chronic graft-versus-host disease of the eyes with bilateral keratoconjunctivitis sicca (dry eye syndrome) developed after the stem cell transplant and is still present.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The news headlines are potentially confusing because\u00a0some state\u00a0Marc is the third case to reflect the chronological sequence (after\u00a0Timothy Ray Brown\u00a0and\u00a0Adam Castillejo) while others designate him\u00a0the fifth to reflect the total number of cases described to date, which include two more recent examples in\u00a0New York City\u00a0and at the\u00a0City of Hope\u00a0in Los Angeles. [3, 4]<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The first scientific description of the D\u00fcsseldorf Patient was in a\u00a0poster presentation\u00a0at the 2016\u00a0Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections\u00a0(CROI), prior to interruption of ART. [5]<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Two post-interruption follow up posters were presented at CROI in\u00a02019\u00a0and\u00a02020. [6, 7]<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The HIV cure research field has thus been aware of the case for a long time, and there was frustration and confusion last year when\u00a0the announcement\u00a0of a fifth similar possible HIV cure at the City of Hope mistakenly referred to it as the fourth based on the unnecessarily prim rationale that information on the D\u00fcsseldorf Patient hadn\u2019t yet been published in a journal. [8] <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Today\u2019s publication will hopefully put any uncertainty to rest.<\/span><\/p>\n

comment<\/h3>\n

Shortly after this paper in Nature Medicine, the New York City case was published as an open access paper in the journal Cell. [9]<\/strong><\/p>\n

A summary of this case includes that:<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n