Man seemingly cured of HIV in Geneva

Researchers have investigated the patient's remission and hope to gain new insights into a cure for HIV. Keystone-SDA

The cure of an HIV patient in Geneva has been confirmed by an article in the renowned scientific journal Nature Medicine. The virus has not been detected in him for 32 months, Geneva University Hospital (HUG) announced on Tuesday.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

The man had received a bone marrow transplant in Geneva. Worldwide, only seven people are considered to be probably cured of an HIV infection after a bone marrow transplant. In all of these cases, the transplant came from a donor with the rare CCR5 delta 32 gene mutation, which is known to make cells naturally resistant to HIV.

+ HIV cases continue to fall in Switzerland

The special feature of the patient treated at the HUG is that the transplant comes from a donor who does not carry the mutation. Despite this, the virus remains undetectable in him even 32 months after the end of antiretroviral therapy.

In the specialist article, researchers have now investigated this patient’s remission in detail. They hope to gain new insights into the cure for HIV.

Translated from German by DeepL/ts

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to [e-mail].