A huge step has been made in the world of medicine as researchers confirm that a woman has been cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant.
The patient was being treated for acute myeloid leukaemia (cancer of the blood and bone marrow) when she received a stem cell transplant. The donor also happened to have a natural resistance to the HIV virus.
A small proportion of humans show partial or apparently complete inborn resistance to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. It is estimated that the proportion of people with some form of resistance to HIV is under 10%.
The woman is the third person to be cured of HIV but the first using umbilical cord stem cells. The other known cases were males, one white and one Latino. They had received adult stem cells which are more frequently used in bone marrow transplants.
Since receiving the cord blood the woman has been free of HIV for 14 months without the need for antiretroviral (ARV) therapy.
Unfortunately, experts say the transplant method used is too risky to be suitable for most people with HIV. All three patients that have been cured needed stem cell transplants to save their lives. Curing their HIV was a positive but unplanned outcome.
Although the treatment cannot be used on everyone, these findings confirm that it is possible to find a cure for HIV. So far, the main hopes of a cure remain focused on vaccines or drugs that can flush the virus out of the body.
According to National HIV Survey (ZIMPHIA 2020), 1.23 million adults in Zimbabwe were living with the HIV virus. This is an indicator that HIV affects a lot of people in Zimbabwe. A few years ago being diagnosed with HIV meant certain death in 1 or 2 years. Now ARVs and lifestyle changes give people a close to normal life expectancy. This new discovery gives people living with the virus hope for themselves and for those with loved ones living with the HIV virus.