Bone Marrow Transplant lets Men Stop Antiretroviral Therapy

HIV patients who received bone marrow transplants have now stopped taking antiretroviral treatment, doctors reported. The men are now off the HIV medication.

One of the patients has stopped taking the drugs for almost four months now. Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital, who have followed the patients, say that it is too early to say if they have been cured of the disease. The study findings were presented at the International Aids Society Conference, BBC reported.

Earlier, two men with HIV had undergone bone marrow transplant for their cancer. Researchers then had found that the patients no longer had detectable levels of HIV.

"I don't want to use the 'cure' word. If they remain virus-free in a year, or even two years, after [stopping] therapy, then we can make a statement that the chances of the virus returning are very low," Dr. Timothy Henrich, a Brigham infectious diseases associate physician and lead author of the study told Associated Press.

Henrich and his co-author Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes had previously said that the men who underwent the transplants (Boston patients) had detectable levels of HIV in their blood before the surgery, but not afterwards. However, the men had stayed on antiretroviral medication. The men had undergone the surgery after chemotherapy and other treatments failed to stop Hodgkin's lymphoma- a type of blood cancer- from spreading. Within eight to nine months, doctors found that the men no longer suffered from HIV or cancer.

Bone marrow is considered to be a major reservoir of HIV. Doctors told BBC that although the patients haven't shown any detectable traces of HIV so far, there could be reservoirs of the virus hiding in brain tissue or gastrointestinal tract.

U.S. doctors had previously announced that they had successfully "cured" a baby of HIV. In this case, the baby from rural Mississippi was put on antiretroviral drugs just 30 hours after birth.