A woman was the third person in the world to be cured of HIV after receiving an umbilical cord blood transplant. Previously two other men have been cured of HIV after receiving bone marrow transplants from donors who carried a mutation that blocks HIV.

The researchers said on Tuesday at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Denver that the woman was of mixed race and diagnosed with HIV in 2013. She was taking antiretroviral drugs to keep her virus levels low. In 2017 she was further diagnosed with leukaemia and received a cord blood transplant that year to treat cancer, along with blood from a close relative to give her temporary immune protection.

The cord blood contained a mutation that blocks HIV entry into cells and came from a partially matched donor. Hence, the cord blood procedure could be a major advancement in developing a cure for HIV. The success of the umbilical cord blood transplant also suggested that it may be possible to cure HIV in more people of varying racial backgrounds than before. Also, cord blood does not need to be matched as closely to the recipient. The scientists further said that most cord blood donors are white, but in this case, even a partial match cured HIV.

JingMei Hsu, M.D., the patient′s physician at Weill Cornell Medicine said in this case the woman left the hospital just 17 days after her transplant and did not develop graft-versus-host disease. The combination of cord blood and her relative′s cells might have spared her from severe side effects which are observed in a typical bone marrow transplant.

Source: Health Day