Two men with HIV have been off AIDS medication for various a few months after receiving stem-cell transplants for many forms of cancer that appear to have eliminated the virus from their bodies, research workers reported on Monday.

Both patients, who were dealt with in Boston and had been on long-term drug therapy to manage their Human immunodeficiency virus, acquired stem-cell transplants after building lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. Since the transplants, health professionals have been incapable to find any facts of HIV disease, Timothy Henrich of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston informed an International AIDS Society convention in Kuala Lumpur.

While it is too beginning to say for certain that the virus has vanished from their bodies altogether, one individual has now been off antiretroviral medication procedure for 15 weeks and the other for 7 weeks. Last summer Henrich 1st reported that the two men had undetectable stages of HIV in their blood after their stem-cell treatment, but at that time they were continue to taking medicines to reduce HIV.

Using stem-cell treatment is not seen as a practical option for widespread use, since it is highly expensive, but the most recent cases could open new methods for dealing with the disease, which infects about 34 million people around the world. The newest cases look like that of Timothy Ray Brown, known as “the Berlin patient”, who became the initial person to be treated of HIV after receiving a bone marrow transplant for leukemia in 2007. There are, however, essential variations.

While Brown’s doctor used originate cells from a contributor with a unusual genetic mutation, known as CCR5 delta 32, which provides people almost resistant to HIV, the two Boston patients received cells without this mutation.

“Dr. Henrich is charting new territory in HIV treatment research,” Kevin Robert Frost, chief management officer of the Basis for AIDS Research, which financed the study, said in a statement.

Scientific developments since HIV was first discovered more than 30 years ago mean the virus is no more time a death phrase and the latest antiretroviral AIDS drugs can manage the virus for decades. But many people continue to do not get treatment early enough, forcing the World Health Organization to call for quicker roll-out of medicines after patients test positive.

Indian generics organizations are leading providers of HIV drugs to Africa and to many other poor nations. Major Western HIV drug makers include Gilead Sciences, Johnson & Johnson and ViiV Healthcare, which is majority-owned by GlaxoSmithKline