Overview
- The Oslo University Hospital team reported Monday in Nature Microbiology that a 63-year-old man remains in sustained remission years after stopping HIV drugs.
- The man received a 2020 bone marrow transplant from his brother, whose CCR5Δ32/Δ32 mutation removes a key entry receptor that many HIV strains use, marking the first reported sibling-donor case.
- Donor cells fully took over in blood, bone marrow, and gut, and exhaustive testing found no replication‑competent virus and no HIV‑specific immune responses.
- The patient endured severe graft-versus-host disease after the transplant but recovered, and researchers say this immune reaction or its treatment may have helped shrink viral reservoirs.
- Scientists stress the transplant is a high-risk cancer therapy and not a general cure, and they urge pooled analyses of rare remission cases to identify biomarkers that could guide safer strategies.