Thomas Kahlert is one of 13 people reported cured of HIV, but that cure isn’t one Ghanaians can get

Kahlert’s Charité team, led by Christian Gaebler, Samad Kor and Olaf Penack, published his case in the journal Nature this year. Across repeated tests they found no intact HIV in his blood, grew no virus from more than 130 million of his CD4 immune cells, and found none in tissue taken from his gut. They suggest the donor’s immune system may have attacked and destroyed the cells in which the virus was hiding, which they describe as a graft-versus-reservoir effect, and say the mechanism still has to be established. They call the outcome “durable HIV remission and potential cure” rather than a confirmed cure, and stress that it describes a single patient.