Loreen Willenberg HIV, system may have cured her of HIV without stem cell transplant, study suggests

 Loreen Willenberg HIV, system may have cured her of HIV without stem cell transplant, study suggests.

A woman may be the first person to be cured of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) without enduring a gruelling stem cell transplant, research suggests.

Loreen Willenberg, 66, from California, was infected with the sexually-transmitted virus in 1992.

An “elite controller”, Willenberg is one of the less than 0.5% of patients whose immune system can suppress the infection without antiretroviral therapy (ART) drugs.

HIV typically lies dormant in cells where it cannot be wiped out by medication or the immune system. ART helps to suppress the virus, but it reactivates if a patient stops taking the therapy.

The unnamed “Berlin patient” was the first to be “cured” of HIV following a stem cell transplant. This was later replicated in Adam Castillejo, “the London patient”.

Castillejo had the transplant as a last resort and it led to him enduring multiple infections, hearing loss and mouth ulcers so severe he was barely able to take his medication.

Willenberg is well known among HIV specialists after she was found to suppress the virus decades after diagnosis.

After looking at 1.5 billion of Willenberg’s blood cells, scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital found no trace of the virus, despite her not being on ART.

One expert said she “could be added to the list of what I think is a cure”, however, another stressed more evidence is required.