HIV may eventually have a cure. Fifth person cured of the disease in Germany

A fifth case of HIV virus cure has been confirmed in Germany. A seropositive man received a bone marrow transplant to cure a leukemia. Since then, he has lived for more than four years without taking medication and without symptoms caused by the AIDS virus.

This 53-year-old man, a resident of the German city of Düsseldorf, became the fifth person in the world cured of HIV infection, the virus that is at the origin of AIDS. This is the third case of cure after bone marrow stem cell transplantation. The man received a bone marrow with a rare genetic mutation that erases the protein responsible for the entry of the virus into the cells.

This is a very expensive procedure, it is risky and it is not the definitive cure for AIDS. People can live a perfectly normal life, getting the virus in a state of dormancy. According to the WHO, there were more than 38 million cases of HIV in 2021 worldwide.