Scientists Report Finding a Second Person to Be ‘Naturally’ Cured of HIV, Raising Hopes for Future Treatments

November 15, 2021

(STAT News) – The woman was a scientific curiosity. Despite being diagnosed with HIV in 2013, she’d never shown any signs of illness. And traditional tests failed to turn up evidence that the virus was alive and replicating in her body. Only the presence of antibodies suggested she’d ever been infected. Since 2017 researchers in Argentina and in Massachusetts had been collecting blood samples from her, meticulously scanning the DNA of more than a billion cells, searching for signs that the virus was still hiding out, dormant, ready to roar to life if the conditions were right. They wanted to do the same with her placenta because even though it’s an organ of the fetus, it’s loaded with maternal immune cells — a target-rich environment to mine for stealth viruses. As the scientists reported Monday in Annals of Internal Medicine, they didn’t find any.  (Read Full Article)