The World Has Just Welcome A Third Patient Who Has Been Cured Of HIV

12 years have gone by since the first and the second HIV-infected patients who had been completely cured and could come back to daily life as healthy ones.

After doctors announced that the second HIV patient was cured two days ago, the whole world has heard about another successful case. We may witness a lot of other HIV-free patients in the near future.

New Scientist revealed that researchers in the Netherlands made an announcement on the “Düsseldorf patient” at the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections which took place in Seattle on March 05.

Similar to the previous HIV-infected patients, the third patient got a transplant on his bone marrow. After three months, doctors allowed him to stop using antiviral drugs. When observing lymph nodes and guts of the patient, they detected that there isn’t any infectious HIV inside biopsies’ results. Annemarie Wensing, a researcher from University Medical Center Utrecht said to New Scientist.

It may be rather soon to ensure the success rate of 100%. It will take a lot of time to determine whether this treatment can be suitable for all patients or not, as well as whether the third patient is completely cured of this disease. After 12 years, doctors and researchers in the world can’t still confirm the kind of virus inside these patients is entirely eliminated or is staying in another undetectable state.

According to New Scientist, Javier Martinez-Picado, who serves as a research professor at the IrsiCaixa AIDS Research Institute in Barcelona, revealed that in addition the three above patients, two other patients have been transplanted bone marrows. They are now using antiviral drugs.

In case these two patients get the positive results like the previous patients, which means they won’t have to suffer from HIV infections even when they don’t take the antiviral drugs anymore, doctors can be confident that the real treatment for HIV-infected patients has been found.