A 60-year-old woman would be the first case of remission reported in France

It could be the first in France. And the eighth in the world. A woman in her sixties suffering from HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) could be the first patient to go into remission. Only seven cases of remission have been recorded so far in the world.

The patient was diagnosed with HIV in 1999 and had undergone several treatments. In 2020, she was admitted to Marseille public hospitals to treat acute myeloid leukemia, a blood cancer attacking the spinal cord. A new hard blow for this woman, who had to undergo a bone marrow transplant. His donor, who “presented a rare genetic mutation”, undoubtedly saved his life by treating his leukemia. But without knowing it, he also opened a door to total HIV remission. An extremely rare case.

According to public hospitals in Marseille, this patient's rare genetic mutation would have prevented HIV from entering the patient's cells. However, the patient had to continue retroviral treatment for three years. This is where “more in-depth” virological examinations were carried out by doctors, in order to check the state of the patient’s illness. And all the tests measuring the patient's viral load were in the same direction: negative.

Although they welcome this discovery, the Marseille public hospitals nevertheless specify that this case is not “generalizable to all patients affected by HIV due to the burden of treatments associated with allograft”. However, it “opens new perspectives for research on the virus”, they believe.

Only eight cases worldwide

The AP-HM recalls that seven similar cases with an allogeneic bone marrow transplant had until then been “reported around the world” and that for six of them, “the donor carried the Delta 32 mutation on the CCR5 receptor “. Timothy Ray Brown was the first person declared cured of HIV in 2008. The patient known as “the Berlin patient” died of cancer in 2020.

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections fell in 2023 to their historic low, in a range between one million and 1.7 million, according to the annual report published in November by the UNAIDS agency.