Two HIV patients stay off daily pills for up to two years after one-time cell therapy

Two people living with HIV have kept the virus under control without their daily pills, one for nearly two years and the other for nearly one year, after a single treatment made from their own blood cells, Reuters reported.

The results come from a small early trial. Steven Deeks of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) presented them at a medical meeting in Boston, in the United States, and Caring Cross, the US nonprofit that developed the therapy, announced them.

How the treatment works

Doctors took blood from each patient and collected the white blood cells that fight infection.

In a laboratory, they changed those cells so they could spot and attack HIV, multiplied them, and put them back into the patient's body.