Woman diagnosed with HIV cures without drugs or bone marrow transplant

Shafaq news/ A woman diagnosed with HIV almost 30 years ago may have been cured of the virus — without taking drugs or having a bone marrow transplant.

Scientists have studied Loreen Willenberg for decades, with the 66-year-old insisting she has never taken medication to keep the virus at bay. Doctors say her body fights the infection naturally.

Ms. Willenberg — who was diagnosed in 1992 and is considered an 'elite controller' because she possesses the rare ability to suppress the virus by itself — never had the risky treatment.

Researchers at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard found no traces of HIV in the Californian woman through standard tests.

Dr Sharon Lewin, director of The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Australia, told the New York Times: 'She could be added to the list of what I think is a cure, through a very different path.'

The team, whose work was published in the journal Nature, say the findings provide evidence that these people have achieved a 'functional cure'.

“Elite controllers” are only believed to account for 0.5 per cent of the 37million people living with HIV across the world.

Elite controllers have latent reservoirs, but they don't need to take drugs to stop the virus from spreading throughout the body.

Results showed that, in elite controllers, HIV genetic material was found in so-called 'gene deserts' of the DNA. These are where there is little gene activity so the virus is unable to make copies of itself and instead remain in a 'blocked and locked' state, and they don’t need take any medicaments.