Another Person Potentially Cured of HIV

Only two people have ever been cured of HIV, both of whom had hematologic malignancies for which they received stem cell transplants from donors lacking the HIV co-receptor (NEJM JW Infect Dis May 2020 and Lancet HIV 2020 Mar 9; [e-pub]). HIV elite controllers are the rare individuals who have undetectable plasma viral loads without taking antiretroviral therapy; however, they usually have virus that can be cultured from the blood and genome-intact HIV proviruses integrated into the host genome. Now, the case of an apparent spontaneous cure in an HIV elite controller has been published.

A 30-year-old woman who received a diagnosis of HIV in 2013 has had undetectable plasma viral loads since then (making her an HIV elite controller). She was …