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Of: TT
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Photo: Manuel Valdés / AP / TT
The first fully cured HIV patient, Timothy Ray Brown, in Seattle on March 4, 2019. He is now terminally ill with leukemia and receiving palliative care at his home in California.
The first patient to be completely free of HIV now has a terminal cancer disease.
American Timothy Ray Brown, known as the so-called “Berlin patient,” made history in 2008 when doctors declared him healthy from the deadly virus.
“No HIV has been found in his blood since he was cured,” Brown’s partner Tim Hoeffgen told activist and author Mark King, who has posted a blog post on Brown’s health.
Instead, the 54-year-old is losing the battle against leukemia, the blood cancer, which he also suffered previously and was declared healthy. Brown receives hospice care at his home in Palm Springs, California, Hoeffgen says.
Brown was studying in Berlin when he learned in 1995 that he was infected with HIV. Eleven years later, in 2006, he was diagnosed with leukemia. To treat cancer, his doctor in Berlin performed a stem cell transplant from a donor who had a rare genetic mutation that made him immune to HIV. The hope was that Brown would get rid of both diseases, and after two painful and dangerous operations, success was a given and Brown could be declared healthy.
Last year, the same method was used to cure the world’s second HIV patient, Adam Castillejo, who underwent a stem cell transplant in London.
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