Pioneering new therapy launches two-stage 'kick and kill' attack on the virus ...
A 44-year-old British man may have become the first person in the world to be cured of
HIV.
Tests showed the virus had become undetectable in the blood of the
previously HIV-positive man, after he was treated with a pioneering new
therapy designed to eradicate the virus.
Researchers have cautioned that it is too early to tell if the
treatment has really worked but said the man, a social worker, had made
"remarkable progress".
The patient was the first of 50 people to complete a trial of the
ambitious treatment which launches a two-stage “kick and kill” attack on
the virus.
The new therapy is unique in that it tracks down and destroy HIV in
every part of the body —including in the dormant cells that evade
current treatments.
“This is one of the first serious attempts at a full cure for HIV,”
Mark Samuels of Britain's National Institute for Health Research told
The Sunday Times.
”This is a huge challenge and it's still early days, but the progress has been remarkable," he said.
The clinical trials, which are being paid for by the NHS, are the
result of a collaboration between doctors and scientists at the
universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London, University
College London and King's College London.
The man, who has not been named, said he participated in the trial to help others with the disease.
HIV, which stands for ”human immunodeficiency virus,“ is mainly
transmitted through sexual acts or by using infected needles. The virus
weakens a person's immune system by destroying T-cells which are crucial
to fighting disease and infection.
About 36.7 million people are living with HIV worldwide, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Antiretroviral therapies target
and suppress active infected cells but they leave millions of
dormant infected T-cells lying in wait throughout the body. This means existing treatments can effectively control HIV but do not cure the disease.
The new treatment, however, would both suppress infections and kill the reservoir of dormant cells,
The Sunday Times reported.
Sarah Fidler, a consultant physician and professor at Imperial
College London, said medical tests of the potentially breakthrough
therapy would continue for the next five years.
”It has worked in the laboratory and there is good evidence it will
work in humans too,“ Ms Fidler said. ”But we must stress that we are
still a long way from any actual therapy."
