Man ’cured’ of AIDS

The American claims he was cured due to a genetic anomaly

Man 'cured' of AIDS

The American claims he was cured due to a genetic anomaly

A US man has reportedly become the first person to ever be cured of AIDS, after he was discovered to have received a HIV immunity gene.

Timothy Ray Brown (45) tested positive for HIV in 1995, but the virus is now completely non-existent in his body, in what doctors have hailed as a "functional cure".

Timothy Ray Brown has been dubbed 'The Berlin Patient' by the medical community

In 2007, while living in Berlin, Brown received a bone marrow stem cell transplant, as he was suffering with leukaemia as well as HIV, and it had quite remarkable results.

"I'm cured of HIV. I had HIV but I don't anymore," he told CBS 5 in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Brown was living in Berlin, Germany back in 2007, dealing with HIV and leukemia, when scientists there gave him a bone marrow stem cell transplant that had astounding results.

"I quit taking my HIV medication the day that I got the transplant and haven't had to take any since," said Brown, who has been dubbed "The Berlin Patient" by the medical community.

Brown's amazing progress continues to be monitored by doctors at San Francisco General Hospital and at the University of California at San Francisco medical center.

Scientists said Brown received stem cells from a donor who was immune to HIV. In fact, about one per cent of Caucasians are immune to HIV.

Some researchers think the immunity gene goes back to the Great Plague: people who survived the plague passed their immunity down and their heirs have it today.

'Functional cure'
UCSF's Dr Jay Levy, who co-discovered the HIV virus, said this case opens the door to the field of "cure research," which is now gaining more attention.

"If you're able to take the white cells from someone and manipulate them so they're no longer infected, or infectable, no longer infectable by HIV, and those white cells become the whole immune system of that individual, you've got essentially a functional cure," he explained.

UCSF's Dr Paul Volberding, an AIDS expert who has studied the disease for all of its 30 years cautioned that while "the Berlin Patient is a fascinating story, it's not one that can be generalised."

Both doctors stressed that Brown's radical procedure may not be applicable to many other people with HIV.