One of the patients for the past four months, not taking antiretroviral drugs, and he has no signs of the return of the virus.
A group of doctors in Brigham Women's Hospital in Boston published a report with the results of their research in Nazhatmaterialah Conference of the International Society of HIV.
However, doctors warn that it is too early to speak of complete cure, and that the virus could return at any moment.
Complete elimination of pathogens of this terrible disease is difficult because the virus hides within human DNA, creating inaccessible to drugs, "tanks".
Antiviral drugs prevent the spread of the virus, but if you stop taking them, the virus usually returns.
The disappearance of the virus?
Two patients, whose names were not disclosed, were infected with the HIV virus about 30 years ago.
Both developed cancer - lymphoma, which required a bone marrow transplant.
Bone marrow is the body that produces new blood cells, and is considered the main "reservoir" for the virus HIV.
After the bone marrow into the blood of the patients recorded the presence of the HIV virus within two years, the other - for four years.
Both patients stopped taking antiviral drugs at the beginning of this year.
One of them, from that moment had passed 15 weeks, the other - seven, but the signs of the return of the virus has not been found.
Dr. Timothy Henrich reported that the results encouraging researchers. However, it is set up carefully.
"We have demonstrated no cure, and no signs of the virus for a long period," - he said.
Doctors believe that the transplanted bone marrow was protected against infection rate of antiviral drugs. Meanwhile, new bone tissue is destroyed the old tissue in which the virus was hiding.
However, Dr. Heinrich said that the virus can hide in the brain or in the digestive tract.
"If the virus does come back, it would mean that these areas are its reservoirs of the virus, and that the methods of dealing with the virus in these areas of the body have to be revised," - said the researcher.
The Berlin patient
Timothy Brown, known as the "Berlin patient" is considered to be the first person to completely cured of HIV infection. He underwent an operation to transplant bone marrow taken from a donor who had rarely encountered resistance to the HIV virus.
Two patients in the United States change was made from conventional donors.
Previously reported as a complete cure of the baby, who was born in Mississippi, USA. The girl received antiviral drugs immediately after birth, and it is believed that the virus was destroyed in her blood before he was able to create reservoirs.
Dr. Michael Brady, medical director of the Terrence Higgins Foundation, said it was too early to judge whether there was destroyed by the HIV virus in the bodies of these patients.
"However, this case suggests that what happened to Timothy Brown, the Berlin patient, there was an exceptional phenomenon. Bone marrow transplantation is a complex and costly process, which involves substantial risk of loss," - he said.
According to him, the majority of people with HIV, such change would be more dangerous than to continue taking anti-viral drugs that block the spread of the virus.
The head of the fund HIV research Kevin Frost believes that American researchers obtained results provide important new information that may change our understanding of HIV and gene therapy.
"These new observations may lead researchers to new approaches to treatment, and even the total destruction of the HIV virus," - said the scientist.
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