Jakarta –
Man in Desert Hot Springs, California, United States (US) Paul Edmunds (67), became the fifth patient in the world to get HIV remission in July 2022. Previously, Edmonds was known anonymously by the patient name ‘City of Hope’ which was inspired by the name hospital where he was treated.
Edmunds was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988. Advances in medicine since then have made the disease undetectable and untransmittable.
Edmunds said he recovered from an illness that killed many of his friends decades ago which made him ‘grateful for life’. He was cured using a rare but risky blood stem cell transplant from someone who has a blood mutation that makes them immune to HIV.
Transplants can often result in deadly infections. Therefore, this therapy is reserved for people like Edmunds who have terminal cancer.
“I am very grateful. I am grateful to be alive. I am grateful that there are donors,” said Edmonds as quoted by the Daily Mail, Friday (21/4/2023).
Edmunds grew up in Georgia, USA. In the mid-1970s, he moved to San Francisco, California.
Years later, the AIDS epidemic emerged. Big cities like San Francisco and New York were hit by the presence of the AIDS epidemic.
AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease. At the time, there was little information about the spread of the disease and many continued to have unprotected sex.
At the peak of the epidemic in 1995, 41,000 Americans died of AIDS. In the late 1980s, about 10 thousand deaths were recorded annually.
Edmunds always remembers seeing the obituaries of friends and loved ones every week.
“At first, it was like a curse. People were afraid of each other,” he said.
At first, Edmunds was afraid of being tested for the virus because he thought it was a ‘death sentence’. In 1988 he finally took the test and was ‘surprised’ by the positive result.
HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) attacks the immune system. HIV makes a person very susceptible to viruses and other illnesses, such as the flu.
When the number of CD4 cells (white blood cells responsible for fighting infection) falls below 200 per cubic millimeter of blood, HIV has transitioned into immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). The rapid spread of this disease in the 1980s shocked the medical world and there is little information available on treatment or prevention.
Finally, increasing public awareness of HIV/AIDS has resulted in a reduction in the number of cases and deaths.
In 1987, the first antiretroviral therapy, which boosts the immune system despite AIDS and makes the disease undetectable and non-infectious, hit the market. Edmunds uses this method of treatment.
In 2012, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) hit the market. Daily pill users can reduce their risk of contracting HIV through sex by up to 99 percent.
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