- HIV is not curable for the wider population as of this writing, and as a result we've rated the claim mostly false.
- A small number of individuals have gone into long-term HIV remission, essentially a functional "cure," through bone marrow transplants.
- However, bone marrow transplants carry significant risks — including severe infections and death — and are only available to patients with a severe blood or bone marrow disease.
- Scientists do not yet consider long-term HIV remission via bone marrow transplant to be a true "cure" because these operations are still new as of this writing. In other words, it's too soon to definitively say whether HIV may still be present in the body and rebound at a later stage.
- A modern HIV diagnosis is not a death sentence, and many people with HIV have long and healthy lives. Consistent treatment for people living with HIV can result in an undetectable viral load, meaning they will not transmit HIV to others, but obstacles such as stigma, access to medication and cost of treatment remain.
In April 2026, social media users
For example, one post read, "HIV is curable now. What a good time to be alive."
We have rated this claim as mostly false.
While researchers have made significant steps toward discovering a cure for HIV, there is no widespread cure for the virus as of this writing. Modern treatments allow many people with HIV to have long and healthy lives without fear of transmitting the virus, as long as they continuously take medication.
The claim that HIV is "curable" appeared to originate from an oversimplification of peer-reviewed research published on April 13 about a 63-year-old man from Oslo who went into long-term HIV remission after receiving a bone marrow transplant from his genetically HIV-resistant brother.
The "Oslo patient" has thus joined a handful of people functionally cured of HIV after bone marrow transplants. These operations, also known as stem cell transplants, carry significant risks, including infection and death, and are only available to patients with a severe blood or bone marrow disease.
Marius Trøseid, one of the researchers who wrote the paper on the Oslo patient, told Snopes that the patient and similar successful cases had been "cured" of HIV "for any practical purposes." However, scientists like him still prefer to call these cases "long-term HIV remission" rather than a true cure. That's because it's not yet clear whether "small amounts of HIV hiding from the immune system could rebound at a later stage," he said.
As researchers continue to report successful cases of long-term HIV remission, momentum builds and the chances of a widespread HIV cure increase, Trøseid said in an email.
"I think we will need at least 10 years to get there," Trøseid wrote.
'Oslo patient' receives 'functional HIV cure'
Researchers published the case of the Oslo patient in the scientific journal
Per the paper, doctors actually selected the patient's brother just because he was a compatible stem cell donor. On the day of the procedure, it was "unexpectedly verified" that the brother carried two copies of a rare genetic mutation called "CCR5 delta 32," which grants resistance to HIV-1, the most common type of HIV. Having two copies effectively prevents the virus from binding to human immune cells called T cells.
Two years after the transplant, the man stopped his antiretroviral therapy, or HIV treatment medication. Antiretroviral therapy stops HIV from reproducing and spreading to other people, but it doesn't eliminate the virus entirely. Continuous treatment makes the virus undetectable, but if a person with HIV stops the therapy, the virus spreads again.
In the Oslo man's case, however, the virus didn't bounce back. Four years after the initial transplant and after two years of no HIV treatment, researchers analyzed the recipient's blood, gut tissues and bone marrow and found no detectable active HIV DNA.
Per the paper, researchers achieved "full donor chimerism" in the Oslo man — in other words, the donated cells multiplied and remodeled the patient's immune system, eventually replacing almost all of his original immune cells in the blood, marrow and gut.
How close are we to curing HIV?
The death rate for bone marrow transplants has decreased significantly over the past decade, as of this writing. A 2019 study also found that long-term outcomes for patients living with HIV who undergo this kind of stem cell transplant is similar to those who receive the operation and don't have HIV.
However, it's still risky: according to the Oslo man study, procedure-related mortality at one year "has been reported to be in the range of 10-20%."
The Oslo man's case, despite being a success story, is an example of these risks: 44 days after his procedure, he developed acute graft-versus-host disease in the gut, a serious, often fatal complication wherein the donated cells view the recipient's cells as an unfamiliar threat. (According to the paper, he recovered after treatment.)
Relapse — or the disease bouncing back — is still the leading cause of death for those who receive a transplant, whether they were living with HIV or not, the study said.
Even if the risk is reduced, it's not feasible to give everyone who has HIV transplants, Trøseid told LiveScience, because there are more than 30 million patients with HIV worldwide. However, there's other "functional cures" in development, such as engineered antibodies.
Meanwhile, efforts continue to eradicate deaths from HIV and AIDS. According to 2024 United Nations data, about 32 million out of the around 41 million people living with HIV have access to care.
That's huge progress in the effort to eradicate a disease that was once a death sentence — but the U.N. AIDS office's 2024 fact sheet said it still fell short of its targeted treatment goal of 34 million patients.
Barriers to both treatment and prevention remain due to stigma, access to medication and cost of treatment, particularly in low-income countries amid U.S. cuts to HIV/AIDS programs. In other words, there's millions of people with HIV who aren't receiving treatment decades after researchers first discovered how to effectively manage HIV, let alone a cure.