A 40-year-old man, who was last year revealed to have been cured of HIV, has revealed his identity saying he wants to be “an ambassador of hope”.
Adam Castillejo, who was previously known as the London patient, had a bone marrow stem cell transplant to treat cancer from an HIV-resistant donor.
He received the transplant in May 2016 and stopped taking the antiretroviral drugs in October 2017.
In March 2019, his doctors revealed to the world that Mr Castillejo was "in remission", reluctant to say he had been cured. However, now they are confident he is free from the virus.
“We think this is a cure now, because it’s been another year and we’ve done a few more tests,” Ravindra Gupta, a professor and HIV biologist who co-led a team of doctors treating Mr Castillejo, told the New York Times.
Mr Castillejo said he wanted to go public because his story is one of optimism for some 39 million people living with the condition all over the world.
“This is a unique position to be in, a unique and very humbling position,” he told the newspaper. “I want to be an ambassador of hope.”
Mr Castillejo, who was diagnosed aged 23, is the second person to be cured of HIV. The first was Timothy Brown, an American man who was cured of the virus in 2008.
