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1 week ago
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How transplant from brother cured Norwegian man of HIV
A Norwegian man has been effectively cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant from his brother, doctors announced on Monday.
The patient’s brother happened to carry a rare, virus-blocking genetic mutation.
The 63-year-old man, dubbed the “Oslo patient”, is the latest in around 10 people worldwide who have gone into long-term remission from HIV after receiving a transplant to treat unrelated blood cancer.
The high-risk procedure normally requires a donor to have a specific mutation of their CCR5 gene, which blocks HIV from entering the body’s cells.
Only around one percent of people in northern Europe have the necessary mutation.
The Oslo patient, who had been living with HIV since 2006, was diagnosed with a fatal blood cancer called myelodysplastic syndrome in 2017.
His doctors searched for a donor who would help treat both. When they couldn’t find one, they chose the man’s elder brother.
However, on the day of the transplant in 2020, the doctors were stunned to discover that the brother carried the CCR5 mutation.
“We had no idea… That was amazing,” doctor Anders Eivind Myhre of the Oslo University Hospital told AFP.
https://www.vanguardngr.com/2026/04/how-transplant-from-brother-cured-norwegian-man-of-hiv/
