A woman infected with HIV in 1992 may be the first person cured of the virus without a risky bone marrow transplant or medications, researchers reported Wednesday.

In an additional 63 people in their study who controlled the infection without drugs, HIV apparently was sequestered in the body in such a way that it could not reproduce, the scientists also reported. The finding suggested that these people may have achieved a “functional cure.”

The research, published in the journal Nature, outlines a new mechanism by which the body may suppress HIV, visible only now because of advances in genetics. The study also offers hope that some small number of infected people who have taken antiretroviral therapy for many years may similarly be able to suppress the virus and stop taking the drugs.

Loreen Willenberg, 66, of California, already famous among researchers because her body has suppressed the virus for decades after verified infection. Only two other people — Timothy Brown of Palm Springs, California, and Adam Castillejo of London — have been declared cured of HIV. Both men underwent bone marrow transplants for cancer that left them with immune systems resistant to the virus. Bone marrow transplants are too risky to be an option for most people infected with HIV, but the recoveries raised hopes that a cure was possible.

HIV inserts itself into the human genome and tricks the cell’s machinery into making copies. HIV prefers to lurk within genes, the most active targets of the cell’s copiers.

In some people, the immune system over time hunts down cells in which the virus has occupied the genome. But scrutiny of the participants in this study showed that viral genes may be marooned in certain “blocked and locked” regions of the genome, where reproduction cannot occur, said Dr. Xu Yu, the study’s senior author and a researcher at the Ragon Institute in Boston.

Participants in the research were so-called elite controllers, the 1% of people with HIV who can keep the virus in check without antiretroviral drugs.

It is possible that some people who take antiretroviral therapy for years may also arrive at the same outcome, the researchers speculated.

In the new study, Yu and her colleagues analyzed 1.5 billion blood cells from Willenberg and found no trace of the virus.

Other researchers were more circumspect. “It’s certainly encouraging, but speculative,” said Dr. Una O’Doherty, a virologist at the University of Pennsylvania. “I need to see more before I would say, ‘Oh, she’s cured.’ ”

But O’Doherty, an expert in analyzing large volumes of cells, said she was impressed by the results.