With the absence of a bone marrow transplant, a woman diagnosed with HIV almost 30 years ago may have been cured of the illness. According to doctors, her body combatted the infection naturally.
The First Person to Be Cured Naturally
In 1992, Loreen Willenberg was contracted with the sexually-transmitted virus. Without enduring a searing stem cell transplant, she may be the first person to be cured of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
Willenberg is regarded as a privileged controller because she possesses the rare capacity to restrain HIV by itself.
Researchers at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard detected no traces of the virus in the 66-year-old via standard tests, reported Shaafaq.
Alongside Berlin and London Patient
The Californian woman has been added to the cured HIV patients list, along with Berlin patient Timothy Ray Brown, and London patient Adam Castillejo who both underwent risky bone marrow transplants.
The woman claimed to not have taken medication as treatment.
The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity researchers believe that Willenberg has been tackling the infection through natural means, reported Mirror.
Willenberg is among the less than 0.5% of infected people whose immune system could restrain the virus without antiretroviral therapy (ART) medication.
The virus normally lies dormant in cells wherein it cannot be fought by the immune system or medication, reported Yahoo Finance.
Both 54-year-old Brown and 40-year-old Castillejo had cancer and underwent a bone marrow transplant from a donor with HIV-resistant genes. This wiped out the illness and the AIDS-causing virus simultaneously.
Incapable of Reproducing
Advanced technology that evaluated 1.5 billion of Willenberg's blood cells detected small quantities of HIV still. This translates that she is not HIV-free. However, the doctors observed that her immune system had proffered for the leftover traces to become incapable of replication.
ART contributes to restrain HIV but it reactivates if a patient stops undergoing therapy.
Castillejo succumbed to the risky transplant as a final option. It was serious up until the point that he was barely able to take his drugs. The transplant led to him experiencing multiple infections, mouth ulcers, and hearing loss.
On Willenberg's case, according to Dr. Sharon Lewin, director of The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Australia, "She could be added to the list of what I think is a cure, through a very different path."
The research study was published in the journal "Nature." According to the researchers, the findings provide evidence to support such people to have achieved a successful cure.
The researchers assessed Willenberg's blood cells to decipher how her body combatted HIV.
The virus is able to conceal itself in the body in the form of "latent reservoirs." While elite controllers also have such latent reservoirs, it seems that they need not take medication to keep them at bay courtesy of the CCR5 gene mutation.
Another 63 patients not on antiretroviral medication were also detected to possess HIV traces that were unable to duplicate. The pathogen does not have the capacity to reproduce due to where these patients HIV imprinted in their DNA.
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