A New Piece of the HIV/AIDS Puzzle Has Been Found

Years ago Timothy Ray Brown and American man, underwent a stem cell transplant that resulted in the successful cure of the HIV infection. Twelve years later, Brown is still free of HIV and now doctors have identified a second successful transplant. It is considered a long-term remission.

An unidentified London man, The New York Times reports, was diagnosed with HIV in 2003 and began taking medication to control the infection in 2012. After developing Hodgkin lymphoma, the patient agreed to a stem cell transplant to treat the cancer in 2016.

Doctors found a perfect donor with a gene mutation with natural resistance to HIV—it was a double copy of the mutation that about 1% of people descended from northern Europeans have inherited.

With the transplant, the patient’s immune system

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