Unusual discovery: An artist's impression of a white blood cell.
Credit: iStockphoto
But the case should not lead to "false hopes", Gero Huetter, one of the members of the medical team, stressed at a news conference on Wednesday.
"This process is not adapted for the treatment of patients with HIV, neither today nor in the near future," Huetter said.
Possible remission
AIDS first came to public notice in 1981, when alert U.S. doctors noted an unusual cluster of deaths among young homosexuals in California and New York.
It has since killed at least 25 million people, and 33 million others are living with the disease or HIV, according to the best estimates.
Previous research involving HIV drugs has shown that when HIV is reduced to below detectable levels, the virus holes up in refuges in the body, such as in dormant memory T cells in lymph nodes. It rebounds when treatment is stopped.
The Berlin case has not yet been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for publication.
