In 2007, an American resident, Timothy Brown was known as the “Berlin patient” when he underwent a treatment and cleared his HIV.
Now, an HIV positive man from London has become the second person ever to be cleared from the AIDS virus.
As per his privacy concerns, the London patient has asked his medical team not to reveal his name, age, nationality or other details
The man called “the London patient” was diagnosed with HIV in 2003 and later he developed Hodgkin lymphoma.
He was treated by specialists at University College London and Imperial College in 2016, when he agreed to undergo a stem cell transplant to treat cancer.
People with HIV are supposed to take daily pills for life to suppress the virus.
However, this patient voluntarily stopped taking HIV drugs.
After three years after f bone marrow stem cell treatment and more than 18 months after coming off antiretroviral drugs, the Londoner underwent highly sensitive test and the tests showed no trace of HIV infection.
A professor and HIV biologist who co-led the team treating the man, Ravindra Gupta said, “There is no virus there that we can measure. We can’t detect anything.”
The concerned doctors said that this does not mean a cure for HIV has been found and described the patient as “functionally cured”.
This seems as the second success after the case of the ‘Berlin patient’ Timothy Brown, who had been living in Berlin, has since moved to the United States and, according to HIV experts, is still HIV-free.
