Scientists have discovered the second person in the world to naturally cure themselves of HIV.

The 30-something year old woman, who lives in Argentina, was found to have zero disease-causin ‘intact’ viruses in her blood.

Even though she had been infected with HIV and tested positive for it, the woman had undetectable levels of the virus in her body.

Harvard scientists announced the findings at a major international meeting of top HIV researchers.

There are 38 million known people who live with HIV around the world. This new discovery gives scientists hope that there is a possible cure for everyone.

“Finding one patient with this natural ability for functional cure (no virus that can reproduce) is good, but finding two means so much more. It means there must be more people like this out there,” said Dr Natalia Laufer, the patient’s medical doctor and HIV researcher in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

“Her HIV antibody test showed she was HIV positive, but the level of virus was undetectable and continued so, over time. This is highly unusual,” she continued.

The patient, whose boyfriend died of AIDS, was diagnosed with HIV in 2013. Both her current partner and baby are HIV negative.

Scientists refer to the woman as an elite controller, which means HIV settles into parts of her genome known as ‘gene deserts’ where they do nothing.

In most cases, the virus settles into the cell’s DNA, where it reproduces and infects.

The only other known HIV patient with no intact virus is 67-year-old Loreen Willenberg from San Francisco, who was identified last August.

Professor Xu Yu, an HIV researcher at the Ragon Institute at Harvard Medical School, said, “The level of functioning virus in these patients is at least 1000 times less than a patient who is on HIV drug therapy.”

The Harvard researchers said the findings have shed light on how elite controllers beat the virus. They hope to one day recreate this in a lab.