SEATTLE: A man in London has become the second person to be free of the AIDS virus after a stem cell transplant, Associated Press reported doctors as saying.

Until now, Timothy Ray Brown from the US was the only person believed to have been cured of HIV after undergoing a transplant in Berlin 12 years ago.

The latest case “shows the cure of Timothy Brown was not a fluke and can be recreated,” said Dr Keith Jerome of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle.

The transplant changed the London patient’s immune system, giving him the donor’s mutation and HIV resistance. The patient voluntarily stopped taking HIV drugs to see if the virus would come back. There is no trace of the virus after 18 months off the drugs, says the report.

(Agencies)