“This is really the miracle of the human immune system that did it,” Dr.

Yu led the exhaustive, no-stone-unturned search for any trace of HIV in the Esperanza Patient, and published the study this month in Annals of Internal Medicine.

In the case of the Esperanza Patient, she is defined as an ‘elite controller’, with rare odds and an immune system that can suppress the dreaded virus naturally.

HIV is difficult to treat and detect, as it is capable of infecting and living dormant in the immune cells, which live the longest, giving it excellent resilience.

“I enjoy being healthy,” the Esperanza patient, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told NBC News in a translated email.

38 million people live with HIV, which over the last two decades has become somewhat treatable with drugs, but the authors state that the more cases like Esperanza that medical science can uncover and study, the more we can begin to understand what it means—and looks like—to cure the disease?