New York Woman Becomes First Female Patient ‘Cured Of HIV’

A patient in a US hospital has reportedly become the first female to be cured of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).

The medical breakthrough was disclosed on Tuesday at a “Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections.”

NBC reported that the patient who is of mixed race received treatment at the New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center in the US.

The patient was reported to have been diagnosed with HIV in 2013, while she was confirmed to have leukemia in 2017.

The lady was treated with a process which involve use of blood drawn from the umbilical cord, also focuses on improving the immune system.

“The procedure used to treat the New York patient, known as a haplo-cord transplant, was developed by the Weill Cornell team to expand cancer treatment options for people with blood malignancies who lack HLA-identical donors.

“First, the cancer patient receives a transplant of umbilical cord blood, which contains stem cells that amount to a powerful nascent immune system. A day later, they receive a larger graft of adult stem cells. The adult stem cells flourish rapidly, but over time they are entirely replaced by cord blood cells.”

The researchers noted they are still monitoring the recovery process, adding that the patient has not been diagnosed with HIV in blood tests over the past 14 months.