PARIS: A HIV-positive man in remission may be the first patient effectively cured of the illness without needing a bone marrow transplant, researchers said on Tuesday in a potential breakthrough.

HIV affects tens of millions of people globally and while the disease is no longer the automatic death sentence it once was, patients need to take medication for life.

In recent years two men — known as the “Berlin” and “London” patients — appear to have been cured of the disease after undergoing high-risk stem cell bone marrow transplants to treat cancer.

Now an international team of researchers believe they may have a third patient who no longer shows sign of infection after undergoing a different medicine regimen.

The patient, a 34-year-old Brazilian who has not been named, was diagnosed with HIV in 2012.

As part of the study, he was given several potent antiviral drugs, including maraviroc and dolutegravir, to see if they could help him rid the virus from his body.

He has now gone more than 57 weeks with no HIV treatment and he continues to test negative for HIV antibodies.

Ricardo Diaz, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Sao Paulo, said the patient could be considered to be free of the disease.

“The significance for me is that we had a patient that was on treatment and he is now controlling the virus without treatment,” he said.

“We’re not able to detect the virus and he’s losing the specific response to the virus — if you don’t have antibodies then you don’t have antigens.”

Published in Dawn, July 8th, 2020