(Nature) – Stem-cell transplants have freed seven people of the virus, but researchers say most long-term interventions remain a distant prospect.

At a major HIV conference in July, scientists announced that a seventh person had been ‘cured’ of the disease. A 60-year-old man in Germany, after receiving a stem-cell transplant, has been free of the virus for almost six years, researchers reported.

The first such instance of eliminating HIV from a person in this way was reported in 2008. But stem-cell transplants, despite being highly effective at ridding people of the virus, are not a scalable strategy. The treatment is aggressive and poses risks, including long-term complications from graft-versus-host disease — a condition in which donor cells attack the recipient’s own tissues. The procedure was only possible in the seven successfully treated people because all of them had cancers that required a bone-marrow transplant, says Sharon Lewin, an infectious-diseases physician who heads the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne, Australia. (Read More)