Human immunodeficiency virus is notorious for its persistence. The virus can lurk within the body for decades and attacks immune cells, compromising a person’s ability to fight other infections. If untreated, HIV infections nearly always progress into AIDS, or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, which is lethal without intervention. But for the second time, researchers have found a person whose body seems to have managed to rid itself of the virus.
Published in Annals of Internal Medicine on November 16, the case report details a likely “sterilizing cure” of an HIV-1 infection. The only other potential case was reported in a 2020 Nature study of elite controllers—rare individuals whose immune systems can limit the replication of HIV without antiretroviral drugs.
In the 2020 study, researchers attempted to determine the persistence of HIV over several years in 64 elite controllers by sequencing copies of the viral genome that had integrated into their cells’ ...
