If someone is completely immune to HIV, what impact will it have on the world? Learn some interesting facts about AIDS!

More than 40 years have passed since AIDS was discovered in the United States in 1981. The cumulative number of people infected with HIV worldwide has exceeded 80 million, with more than 39 million surviving cases, and more than 40 million people have died from AIDS-related diseases. There is still no cure for AIDS and no vaccine to prevent AIDS.

When AIDS was first discovered, many infected people died within 1-2 years after being diagnosed, so for a period of time people believed that AIDS was a terminal illness and that HIV infection meant death. After years of research by scientists, more and more drugs have been developed to treat AIDS, and now AIDS is no longer a terminal illness, but unfortunately there is still no vaccine to prevent HIV.

Some netizens have questions. If there is no vaccine to prevent HIV, is it possible that some people are naturally immune to HIV?

1. Berlin Patient

In 2007, an American named Timothy Ray Brown suddenly became the focus of the world's attention. Before that, he suffered from leukemia and AIDS at the same time. The medical community considered this patient, dubbed the "Berlin patient", to be a man who was about to step into the grave. However, surprisingly, after receiving a bone marrow transplant for leukemia in Berlin, Germany, his AIDS was miraculously "cured". This was the first time that scientists successfully "cured" AIDS!

2. The London Patient

In 2019, Professor Ravindra K. Gupta's team at the University College London published a study in the journal Nature, which showed that an HIV-infected person known as the "London patient" entered a sustained remission period after receiving hematopoietic stem cell transplantation therapy for lymphoma, and no signs of HIV recurrence were found in the 18 months after stopping antiviral drugs. The researchers said this may be the second case of HIV infection in history to be cured!

Three other cases

In March 2019, another case of HIV infection that may be cured was reported online, known as the "New York patient." She is the first woman of color who may be cured after being infected with HIV. The patient was infected with HIV and had acute myeloid leukemia. When she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, she had been receiving antiviral treatment for 4 years to control HIV in her body, and had been under good control, but HIV was still detectable. In 2017, she underwent a stem cell transplant. At the 37th month after the transplant, she stopped antiviral treatment for HIV, and no signs of HIV infection were detected within 14 months after completely stopping treatment.

In 2022, the City of Hope research team reported a 66-year-old American man who received a bone marrow transplant. He was diagnosed with HIV in 1988 and later developed leukemia. After receiving a bone marrow transplant in 2019, he stopped antiviral treatment for more than 17 months, and doctors did not find any signs of HIV replication. He is called the "City of Hope patient."

In February 2023, the team of Bjorn Eric Ole Janssen from the University Hospital of Düsseldorf, Germany, published the details of the fifth AIDS patient who may be cured in the journal Nature Medicine. The 53-year-old male AIDS patient was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in January 2011. In 2013, he received a bone marrow transplant at the University Hospital of Düsseldorf, Germany. Four years after stopping antiviral treatment, no active HIV was detected in his body. This patient was called the "Düsseldorf patient."

IV. Revelation

If you look closely, the five "cured" cases mentioned above have one thing in common, that is, they were infected with HIV and suffered from leukemia at the same time. After receiving bone marrow transplantation, they were successfully "cured" of AIDS. The most critical thing is that their bone marrow donors are people with natural CCR5Δ32 allele mutations, who are naturally immune to HIV!

The reason why HIV can destroy human immunity is that it can infect a very important cell in the immune system - CD4T lymphocytes. Most HIV rely on two proteins on the surface of CD4T lymphocytes to successfully invade, one is the CD4 molecule, and the other is the CCR5 molecule (the second protein of a small number of viruses is CXCR4). Human cells can only be invaded by HIV if they express both CD4 and CCR5 proteins at the same time. The CCR5Δ32 allele mutation will cause the loss of CCR5 protein, but it will not cause obvious diseases. Ordinary people will not realize that they carry this "gene defect" without special examination, but this "defect" has become a natural resistance to prevent HIV invasion!

Through the above cases, we can see that there is a small number of people in the world who are naturally immune to HIV. Scientists have finally determined through research that the proportion of this group of people is about 1%, mainly concentrated in Europe. This provides a new direction for the prevention and treatment of AIDS!

These cases have brought a lot of inspiration to the treatment of AIDS. People can use the "gene knockout" technology to knock out the CCR5Δ32 allele in the gene to completely cure AIDS. There are many related studies at present, and the progress is also good.

It should be noted that despite the many research results, there is still a long way to go before they can be truly applied in clinical practice. Therefore, we still cannot take HIV lightly and still need to attach importance to AIDS prevention!

To prevent AIDS, you need to do the following: First, when engaging in sexual intercourse (including heterosexual intercourse between men and women and homosexual intercourse between men), you must use condoms throughout, correctly, and every time; second, you should not take drugs in any way, and people who are addicted to drugs should quit the addiction as soon as possible; third, women infected with HIV must follow the doctor's advice and carry out blocking treatment during pregnancy.

(Author: Qin Fei, Chengdu Fifth People's Hospital)