‘THE DÜSSELDORF PATIENT’

Fifth Man Cured of HIV After Stem Cell Transplant, Says Researchers

The case was originally made public in 2019 but scientists were hesitant to say the man was cured.

A fifth man was been reported to have been cured of HIV, according to research published by Dr. Bjorn-Erik Ole Jensen and other researchers on Monday in the publication, Nature Medicine. The 53-year-old German man, dubbed the Düsseldorf patient, had undergone a stem cell transplant in 2014, considered “too risky to offer as a cure with everyone with HIV,” according to reporting by ABC. He had stopped taking HIV medication in 2019. While his successful case became public at the time, researchers could not definitely say he was cured. On Monday, that all changed. “The absence of a viral rebound and the lack of immunological correlates of HIV-1 antigen persistence are strong evidence for HIV-1 cure,” reads the study. HIV is normally a chronic, lifelong disease. “I think we can get a lot of insights from this patient and from these similar cases of HIV cure,” Jensen told the outlet. "These insights give us some hints where we could go to make the strategy safer.”