BATTLING HIV/AIDS
‘Berlin Patient’ totally cured of AIDS virus? Timothy Ray Brown, believed to be the only man to have been cured of AIDS, plans to join the search for a cure for others by founding an AIDS research foundation. “I am living proof that there could be a cure for AIDS,” Brown, widely known as the ‘Berlin Patient’, announced at a press conference in Washington last month. “I am now choosing to dedicate my life, my body, and my story to finding a cure for AIDS.” Brown said he would partner with the World AIDS Institute to raise money for research into a cure. But researchers in California have found traces of HIV in his tissues, raising a question mark Bureau
T
he world is on the verge of a significant breakthrough in the fight against Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). In his first American press conference last month, Timothy Ray Brown of San Francisco, known in medical circles as the “Berlin Patient”, declared: “I am HIV negative. I am cured of the AIDS virus.” Brown, 46, was diagnosed as HIV positive 18 years ago and had begun antiretroviral treatment. His case was complicated by acute myeloid leukaemia, which was diagnosed in 2006. It was this diagnosis
that has resulted in the possibility of a cure for AIDS. His physician, German hematologist Dr Gero Hutter, introduced Brown to a revolutionary treatment for leukaemia that turned out to be a cure for both diseases. Dr Hutter gave Brown a stem cell bone marrow transplant from a donor who had a natural immunity to HIV, called a CCR5 mutation, which is found in less than one per cent of Northern Europe’s population. After receiving the transplant, Brown was found to have no active HIV cells in his body.
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FUTURE MEDICINE I August 2012