A young woman from Argentina may be the first to clear HIV-1 naturally, without stem cell transplantation, raising hopes that a ‘sterilising cure’ may be a rare but possible outcome of infection, US researchers say.

A sterilising cure means complete elimination of replication-competent proviruses, Dr Xu Yu of Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, and colleagues note in Annals of Internal Medicine.

It was previously believed to have occurred in only two patients (the ‘Berlin patient’ and the ‘London patient’) both of whom had leukaemia and underwent allogeneic haematopoietic stem-cell transplants.

The 30-year-old woman, who was diagnosed with HIV in 2013, was an “elite controller” who had no detectable virus after seven years without antiretroviral therapy (ART), the researchers said.