The second HIV patient who recovered, how do you do it?

The second time in the history of an HIV patient who was declared cured after receiving various treatments, both for HIV and other alternatives. The patient, who is a British citizen, has actually recovered from HIV since last March and has finally decided to open his identity now.

One question for the public that is addressed to the British man is how he can recover from a disease for which no cure has been found.

How can a patient be declared cured of HIV?

According to reports from a number of media, the patient named Adam Castillejo was reportedly cured of HIV after receiving a bone marrow transplant for lymphoma.

According to a report from the journal Nature, the transplant comes from a donor with a genetic mutation that can inhibit the ability of HIV to enter cells, aka prevent transmission. As a result, this transplant can replace the patient's immune system to become resistant to the virus.

This method is actually used to cure blood cancer in patients and is not the first choice for treating HIV.

Adam's blood cancer made chemotherapy impossible. Therefore, this method is used as an effort to treat blood cancer so that it can receive treatment.

In fact, bone marrow transplants have long been used to treat blood cancers like this. However, the results are quite satisfactory from bone marrow donors that have the ability to fight HIV.

Instead of using a donor whose criteria only matched, the research team selected a donor with two copies of the CCR5 gene mutation. CCR5 is a gene that provides resistance to HIV infection.

This gene codes for receptors on the surface of white blood cells that are involved in the body's immune response. Normally, HIV will bind to these receptors and attack cells, but the loss of CCR5 makes the receptors stop working, so they don't function properly.

Two copies of this gene mutation can be found in at least 1% of people of European descent and are immune to HIV infection. Therefore, a bone marrow transplant from the selected gene mutation made this HIV patient from England declared cured.

Get to know bone marrow transplants that cure HIV

Previously, bone marrow transplants were also used to cure the first patient who was declared cured of HIV, namely Timothy Ray Brown.

Brown, who is called the Berlin patient, is considered "free" from HIV after receiving the same method as Adam Castillejo in 2007. For more than a decade now, he has not taken anti-HIV drugs anymore.

The approach that doctors took to Brown was seen as a miracle. Similar to a patient from England, Brown received a bone marrow transplant to treat leukemia in order to undergo chemotherapy.

After undergoing this treatment, the results were quite surprising. The bone marrow donor in Brown's body has a gene mutation that can prevent HIV from worsening the cells in his body.

However, this bone marrow transplant turned out to have side effects that nearly caused Brown's death. As the first patient to recover from HIV, the method used by doctors has experienced many failures and side effects.

Therefore, Brown was declared cured of HIV, but bone marrow transplant is not recommended by doctors as the main treatment for HIV.

So, is there a special drug to be completely cured of HIV?

Brown and Castillejo's bone marrow transplantation is considered to be one of the “new breakthroughs” in the world of health. However, experts are still not sure whether this method can be used by the majority of HIV patients to get them cured.

According to Avert, until now there is no specific drug to fight the HIV virus. However, there are several HIV treatments that are done to keep the patient healthy and the risk of death low.

Normally, when a patient is diagnosed with HIV they will undergo treatment with antiretroviral drugs (ARVs). The use of antiretroviral drugs aims to manage HIV and prevent this virus from damaging the immune system.

However, experts are still in the research process to find and develop specific drugs to cure HIV. The following are some of the experiments conducted by experts to find drugs that can make HIV patients recover.

Functional healing

One of the methods tried to get patients to recover from HIV is functional healing. This method is used to reduce the size of the HIV virus tissue in the body so that it cannot be detected at all or causes pain even though it is still there.

Some people may consider antiretrovirals to be an effective functional method of healing. However, please note that this method aims to suppress the virus so that long-term drug use is not required.

Functional healing has been tested in several patients and among them there are patients who are cured. However, it is possible for the HIV virus to reappear in the patient's body, so that it cannot be said to be a complete cure.

Sterile healing

Apart from being functional, the method of sterilization drugs is also used so that patients can completely recover from HIV, including viruses that may not be detected.

Sterile healing is the method used by Brown and Castillejo. Both of them underwent a bone marrow transplant to treat their blood cancer.

The transplant came from a donor with genes that were naturally resistant to HIV. There is no definite answer why these two patients recovered from HIV. In fact, this method is also considered quite serious because the side effects can endanger the patient's life.

Even so, these two patients are hopeful in the medical world to provide additional information on their journey to find a cure for HIV.