Scientists have discovered the second person ever known to have naturally cured themselves of HIV.
The woman, who lives in Argentina and has been referred to as the Esperanza Patient, was found to have zero disease-causing or so-called ‘intact’ viruses in her body.
Despite have been infected by the virus and testing positive for it, the 30-something-year-old woman had undetectable levels of HIV in her body.
The discovery was announced by Harvard scientists at a major international meeting of HIV experts.
It is hoped that the possibility of a cure for the 38million people who live with HIV around the world is now a little closer.
“Finding one patient with this natural ability for functional cure (no virus that can reproduce) is good, but finding two means so much more. It means there must be more people like this out there,” said Dr Natalia Laufer, the patient’s medical doctor and HIV researcher in Buenos Aires, Argentina, The Times reported.
"Her HIV antibody test showed she was HIV positive, but the level of virus was undetectable and continued so, over time. This is highly unusual.”
The Esperanza Patient, whose boyfriend died of AIDS, was diagnosed in 2013, and both her current partner and baby are HIV negative.
She is what scientists call an elite controller, which means HIV settles into parts of her genome known as 'gene deserts' where they do nothing.
Usually the virus nestles into the cell's DNA to reproduce and infect.
The only other known HIV patient with no intact virus is 67-year-old Loreen Willenberg from San Francisco, who was identified last August.
Professor Xu Yu, a HIV researcher at the Ragon Institute, Harvard Medical School, said: “The level of functioning virus in these patients is at least 1000 times less than a patient who is on HIV drug therapy.”
The Harvard scientists said the findings have shed light on how elite controllers beat the virus, which one day they hope to recreate.
