New official case of HIV cure after bone marrow transplant: The “Dusseldorf patient” no longer has any traces of the virus in his body, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine.

So far, only two similar healing cases have been described in scientific publications: a Berlin patient in 2009 and a London patient in 2019.

Two other cases of healing were detailed last year at scientific conferences, but no official publications have yet been made.

This third patient, a man seen in Düsseldorf, received a stem cell transplant to treat a form of leukemia and was then able to stop his antiretroviral treatment against HIV, explained the international consortium IciStem, which partnered with the Institut Pasteur in this study.

In their analysis, the researchers found no viral particles, an activated viral reservoir, and no immune response against the virus in this person, despite stopping treatment for 4 years.

All cured patients have a special common situation. They suffered from blood cancer and benefited from stem cell transplants that profoundly renewed their immune systems.

Their donor had a rare mutation in a gene called CCR5, a genetic mutation known to prevent HIV from entering cells.

“During bone marrow transplantation, the patient’s immune cells are completely replaced by donor cells, which allows the vast majority of infected cells to disappear,” explained one of the authors of the study.

“This is an exceptional situation when all these factors coincide, so that this transplant is a double success in the treatment of leukemia and HIV,” the researcher noted.