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Timothy Ray Brown, who became famous as the “Berlin patient” and was considered cured as the first person to be infected with HIV, has died. Brown died of leukemia at the age of 54, the International AIDS Society (IAS) said Wednesday (local time). ) Con. “We owe Timothy and his physician Gero Hütter great gratitude for opening the door for scientists to investigate the concept that a cure for HIV is possible,” said IAS President Adeeba Kamarulzaman.
Brown died at his home in Palm Springs, California, the New York Times reported, citing his partner, Tim Hoeffgen. “Timothy would like to be remembered as a man who gave hope to people around the world that HIV can be cured,” Hoeffgen said.
Born in 1966 in Seattle, the west coast metropolis of the United States, Brown was raised only by his mother. In 1993 he moved to Berlin, where he studied, worked in a cafe and as a translator. In 1995 he was diagnosed with HIV. When he also contracted leukemia in 2006, he needed a stem cell transplant.
Brown became an HIV activist
Doctors at the Berlin Charité found a donor that lacked the so-called CCR5 receptor, a gateway through which HIV enters many cells in the body. The date of the very risky but successful stem cell transplant, February 6, 2007, Brown later described as his “new date of birth.” The pathogen had not been detected in Brown since transplantation. The leukemia had returned now.
Originally, Brown was only known under his pseudonym “Berlin Patient”, but later decided to appear publicly under his real name as an activist in the fight against HIV. “At some point I decided that I no longer wanted to be the only person in the world to be cured of HIV,” he once said in an interview. I wanted there to be more. And to do that, I had to show the world who I am and be an HIV activist. “
Now there is a “London patient”
Last year, doctors at University College London reported on another HIV patient who may have been cured after a special stem cell transplant. The so-called “London patient” is Adam Castillejo, 40, born in Venezuela. “Even if the Timothy and Adam cases do not show a strategy that can be implemented on a large scale, they represent crucial moments in the search for a cure for HIV,” said Sharon Lewin, director of the Doherty Institute in Melbourne, Australia, according to IAS. A comparable therapy is only possible for a very small number of HIV-infected people.
Brown once said that his story is important because it shows that there is a cure for HIV. “And if something has happened before in the medical sense, it can happen again.” (SDA)
