The first man to ever get cured of HIV is now dying from terminal cancer, confirmed the partner of the man.
Timothy Ray Brown, an American, who was once known as the Berlin Patient, tested positive with HIV in 1995.
He was attending a university in Germany when he got an incurable disease.
As part of his treatment at that time for Leukemia, he underwent bone marrow transplants from donors that had a mutation called the CCR5 Delta 32.
People with the CCR5 Delta 32 have virtual immunity to the HIV disease.
He was given intensive chemotherapy, which made him extremely ill, but the treatment helped him get a new immune system and the deadly disease went away.
Talking about the treatments that he got and the challenges that he faced, he said:
I received the stem cells for a second time in February 2008. The recovery from that did not go well. I became delirious, nearly went blind, and was almost paralyzed. I eventually learned to walk again at a center for patients with extreme brain injuries.
The leukemia of the Berlin patient went into remission and over the following years, he went through a number of HIV tests, which showed that he had beaten the deadly disease again and again.
However, his leukemia has returned recently, which was revealed by the partner of the Berlin patient.
Tim Hoeffgen, the partner of Brown, revealed the horrible news to Mark S. King, a blogger.
Talking about the condition, Hoefggen told King:
Timothy is not dying from HIV, just to be clear. HIV has not been found in his bloodstream since he was cured. That’s gone. This is from the leukaemia.
Brown was isolated in a hospital for a number of weeks because doctors that are treating him are concerned about him contracting the coronavirus, which could be life-threatening for him due to the illness that he already has.
Brown recently decided to abandon any further treatment and has started care at home.
HIV researchers are visiting his house along with the family of the HIV cured patient, said reports.