HIV Breakthrough! Spain Finds Functional Cure For HIV Virus (Confirmed)

Doctors in Barcelona, Spain believe they have
found the cure to HIV – the AIDS-causing virus
that affects the lives of more than 34 million
people worldwide, according to WHO.
By using blood transplants from the umbilical
cords of individuals with a genetic resistance to
HIV, Spanish medical professionals believe they
can treat the virus, having proven the procedure
successful with one patient.
A 37-year-old man from Barcelona, who had
been infected with the HIV virus in 2009, was
cured of the condition after receiving a
transplant of blood.
While unfortunately the man later died from
cancer just three years later, having developed
lymphoma, the Spanish medical team is still
hugely encouraged by what it considers to be a
breakthrough in the fight against HIV and related
conditions, according to the Spanish news
source El Mundo.
Doctors in Barcelona initially attempted the
technique using the precedent of Timothy Brown,
an HIV patient who developed leukemia before
receiving experimental treatment in Berlin, the
Spanish news site The Local reported.
Brown was given bone marrow from a donor who
carried the resistance mutation from HIV. After
the cancer treatment, the HIV virus had also
disappeared.
According to The Local, the CCR5 Delta 35
mutation affects a protein in white blood cells
and provides an estimated one percent of the
human population with high resistance to
infection from HIV.
Spanish doctors attempted to treat the
lymphoma of the so-called “Barcelona patient”
with chemotherapy and an auto-transplant of the
cells, but were unable to find him a suitable
bone marrow.
“We suggested a transplant of blood from an
umbilical cord but from someone who had the
mutation because we knew from ‘the Berlin
patient’ that as well as [ending] the cancer, we
could also eradicate HIV,” Rafael Duarte, the
director of the Haematopoietic Transplant
Programme at the Catalan Oncology Institute in
Barcelona, told The Local.
Prior to the transplant, a patient’s blood cells are
destroyed with chemotherapy before they are
replaced with new cells, incorporating the
mutation which means the HIV virus can no
longer attach itself to them. For the Barcelona
patient, stem cells from another donor were used
in order to accelerate the regeneration process.
Eleven days after the transplant, the patient in
Barcelona experienced recovery. Three months
later, it was found that he was clear of the HIV
virus.
Despite the unfortunate death of the patient
from cancer, the procedure has led to the
development of an ambitious project that is
backed by Spain’s National Transplant
Organization.
March 2016 will mark the world’s first clinical
trials of umbilical cord transplants for HIV
patients with blood cancers.
Javier Martinez, a virologist from the research
foundation Irsicaixa, stressed that the process is
primarily designed to assist HIV patients
suffering from cancer, but “this therapy does
allow us to speculate about a cure for HIV,” he
added.

Source:;Southern Daily