Reports: Patients reported as cured of HIV experience return of virus

NEW YORK — Two patients in Boston whom researchers had thought were cured of HIV have experienced a relapse of the infection, according to published reports.

The New York Daily News reported that the two men, who were believed cured after receiving bone marrow transplants for lymphoma, had the virus return.

In both patients, the virus had been reduced to undetectable levels, and they had stopped taking antiretroviral drugs for HIV. But due to latently infected cells, often called "reservoirs," the virus was able to return and the two have resumed taking drugs for it. Another patient, Timothy Ray Brown, received a bone marrow transplant in 2007 in Berlin from a patient with a rare genetic mutation that makes people resistant to the virus and has apparently remained cured, according to reports.