Report: 2 Men with HIV thought To Be Cured See Reappearance of Virus

Researchers are saying a pair of HIV-positive men from Boston, thought to have been cured of the disease after undergoing bone marrow transplants, has since seen the reappearance of the virus that causes AIDS in their bloodstream.

The Boston Globe reports a team led by Dr. Timothy Henrich, an infectious disease specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, revealed the disappointing findings on Friday at a Florida conference on HIV.

“This suggests that we need to look deeper, or we need to be looking in other tissues . . . the liver, gut, and brain,” Henrich told The Globe. “These are all potential sources, but it’s very difficult to obtain tissue from these places so we don’t do that routinely.”

Both patients reportedly had undergone bone marrow transplants to combat lymphoma – and had since then stopped taking the costly cocktail of medicines that keeps HIV from reproducing in the body. HIV is a virus that attacks – and destroys – the body’s immune system. An HIV-positive patient is said to have AIDS once their immune system has deteriorated beyond a certain, clinically measured point.

In one of the Boston patients’ cases, the virus reportedly reappeared after 12 weeks of not having taken medication. In the other, it returned after 32.

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