SPECIAL | HIV is no longer a death sentence. But why is a viable cure so elusive?
The Excerpt
USA TODAY
4.1 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 25 September 2024
⏱️ 15 minutes
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Summary
This year, for just the seventh time since the start of the HIV pandemic, a person was cured of the virus. That patient, along with the others cured, had received stem cell transplants to treat another life-threatening disease, blood cancer. But because these transplants carry a significant mortality risk, they're simply not a viable cure for the roughly 40 million people globally living with the virus. Dr. Sharon Lewin, Professor of Medicine at Doherty Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia joins The Excerpt to discuss why, in the 40 years since the onset of the HIV pandemic, we still don't have a cure.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Wunderry Plus subscribers can listen to USA Today's The Excerpt, ad free right now. |
| 0:05.0 | Join Wunderry Plus in the Wundery app. |
| 0:08.0 | Hello and welcome to the excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. |
| 0:14.0 | Today is Wednesday, September 25th, 2024 and this is a special episode of the excerpt. |
| 0:22.0 | This year for just the seventh time since the start of the HIV pandemic, |
| 0:29.0 | a person, a German man, was cured of the virus. |
| 0:32.6 | Following stem cell transplants to treat blood cancer, |
| 0:35.6 | only seven HIV patients have survived the treatment |
| 0:38.9 | with no viable HIV virus left present in their bodies. |
| 0:43.0 | Stem cell transplants are not without risk though, |
| 0:46.0 | and in the 40 years since the onset of the HIV pandemic, |
| 0:50.0 | a cure for the roughly 40 million people globally living with the virus remains elusive. |
| 0:56.0 | Joining us now to discuss why HIV remain such a challenging virus to treat and cure is Dr. |
| 1:02.2 | Sharon Lewin, Professor of Medicine at Doherty Institute at |
| 1:05.7 | University of Melbourne, Australia. Thanks for being on the excerpt, Sharon. |
| 1:09.7 | Thanks very much, Dana. Stem cell transplants have now been proven to eradicate HIV in the human body. |
| 1:17.8 | Why is this not a viable treatment for most of those living with HIV? |
| 1:22.4 | Well, stem cell transplants are actually quite a dangerous |
| 1:25.9 | procedure and they're only done for people that also have a life-threatening illness such as |
| 1:31.8 | a blood cancer. |
| 1:33.3 | And that was the case in the seven people that you described who have been cured of HIV. |
| 1:38.2 | Each of them had a life-threatening blood cancer or leukemia, needed a bone marrow transplant for their blood disease, |
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