The HIV epidemic has proved to be a deadly and hard to combat disease, and over the years there has been some progress in the field of treating it, with everything from certain medications to blood transfusions (if you have that kind of money).

That is all done only to treat the virus and suppress the symptoms, but what if there was a way to CURE it?

The “Berlin Man”, Timothy Ray Brown, was so far the only human known to have been cured of their HIV, happening about a decade ago thanks to a stem cell transplant.

That all changed recently thanks to a similar transplant done to who is now called the “London patient”.

Both of these men received a CCR5 mutation, which allowed for both of the men to show no signs of HIV. For Timothy Ray Brown, it has been out of his system for years, and for the “London patient” about 18 months. However, it’s too early to consider this a cure, according to Ravindra Gupta, virologist at University College London. Although great progress has been made so far with the London patient, previous trials have shown that these types of treatments for HIV have proven faulty, as the it would still return into the patients body, but just later than what a usual person with HIV would see.

So if the London patient also shows no signs of HIV in the coming years, is it safe to say that HIV can be cured? Possibly, but the distribution of this type of treatment would be incredibly difficult. I think everyone can agree at this point that more funding and research needs to be done before any definite conclusions are to be made, but one can always hope for the best.