Case Study of Co-morbidities --- HIV/AIDS and Blood Cancer

Abstract

HIV/AIDS is considered an uncurable disease today, and patients have to take medicine uninterrupted for their whole life to control the viral load. However, there have been five special cases possibly cured --- the Berlin patient (HIV-1 and AML), the London patient (HIV-1 and Hodgkin’s Lymphoma), the Düsseldorf patient (HIV-1 and AML), the New York patient (HIV-1 and high-risk AML monosomy 7), and the City of Hope patient (HIV-1 and AML). They were infected with HIV and blood cancer concurrently and received allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant (allo-HSCT). By comparing the Düsseldorf patient and the New York patient who are in relatively similar conditions, umbilical cord blood (UCB) is very likely to be the better source for transplant based on the severity of graft versus host disease (GvHD) after transplant. A possible future treatment which is to combine the haematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) and gene therapy with the help of CRISPR-Cas9, is suggested.