The patient, who wishes to remain anonymous and is 66 years old from Kent, was cured of the virus by chance after receiving a stem cell transplant to treat his leukaemia.
Doctors decided three and a half years ago that they needed to replace his cancerous blood cells with those of a donor who happened to be HIV-resistant.
The man, dubbed “City of Hope” after the California medical facility where he was treated, has been in remission from both blood cancer and HIV for 17 months.
When I was diagnosed with HIV in 1988, like many others, I thought it was a death sentence,” he said in a statement.
I never imagined I’d live to see the day when I’d be HIV-free.
He is the oldest patient believed to have been cured in this manner, one of four so far.
Timothy Ray Brown, the “Berlin patient,” was the first in 2007.
Doctors in New York reported earlier this year that they had cured the first woman of HIV in the same way.
The cure is the “holy grail,” according to the president-elect of the International Aids Society (IAS), and it provides “continued hope and inspiration” for people living with HIV.
Researchers believe it works because non-HIV positive donors lack the receptors that HIV uses to infect cells.
