A South Korean patient of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections survived for nearly 30 years without symptoms while taking Korean red ginseng daily, mostly without any other medication, a group of researchers said Thursday.

The research garnered attention as it is rare for HIV patients to survive so long without treatment. The average HIV patient who does not receive medical help survives about 11 years.

The patient was diagnosed as HIV positive in 1987. Since then, the patient has taken a dozen red ginseng capsules a day, each containing 500 mg of the root, and has not used any other medication, according to a team led by Cho Young-gul, a professor at the University of Ulsan’s Asan Medical Center.

The red ginseng was manufactured by steaming it for three hours and then drying it at 50 to 80 degrees Celsius, before being put into capsules.

The patient, however, has not taken the capsules regularly recently for undisclosed personal reasons and suffered declining level of immunity. The patient is now reportedly receiving both ginseng and antiviral agent.

Cho said red ginseng seemed to cause defects in the genetic code of HIV, curbing the progression of the disease.

Red ginseng treatment “might induce genetic defects in the negative factor (nef) gene,” of the human immunodeficiency virus, he said in a report published February in the Journal of Ginseng Research.

From news reports