Woman Becomes the Third Person Ever Cured of H.I.V.

A transplant method that uses umbilical cord blood has cured a mixed race woman of H.I.V. She is the third person with the deadly disease to ever be cured. The first two patients were cured using stem cells from bone marrow transplants. Umbilical cord blood does not need to be matched as closely to the recipient, and therefore it has the potential to help many more patients. The development is also encouraging because female patients are more difficult to treat, and it was previously thought that transplant patients needed stem cells from an individual of the same race.