First patient 'cured' of HIV?
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Timothy Ray Brown, from San Francisco, had been living with HIV for over a decade when, in 2006, he was diagnosed with leukemia. Brown moved to Germany in 1993 and was treated for his leukemia at a clinic in Berlin where, after unsuccessful chemotherapy, doctors gave him a bone marrow transplant from a donor who had a genetic resistance to the HIV virus.
Brown’s case was first reported to the media in 2008. At this point, 20 months after the bone marrow transplant, he seemed to be completely free of both the leukemia and the HIV.
Professor Rodolf Tauber, from the Charite clinic, said: ‘This is an interesting case for research. But to promise to millions of people infected with HIV that there is hope of a cure would not be right.’
HIV is estimated to have infected 33 million people worldwide, but only one in 1,000 Europeans and Americans have a resistance to HIV and could act as donors.
Professor Andrew Sewell of the University of Cardiff said ‘The problem is most people with HIV...
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