MISSISSIPPI: A baby girl in the United States (US)born with HIV appears to have been cured after very early treatment with standard drug therapy, researchers say.
The Mississippi child is now two-and-a-half years old and has been off medication for about a year with nosigns of infection.More testing needs to be done to see if the treatment - given within hours of birth- would work for others.If the girl stays healthy, it would be the world'ssecond reported 'cure'.Dr Deborah Persaud, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, presentedthe findings at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta."This is a proof of concept thatHIV can be potentially curable in infants," she said.
In 2007, Timothy RayBrown became the first person in the world believed to have recovered fromHIV.His infection waseradicated through an elaborate treatment for leukaemia that involved the destruction of his immune system and a stem cell transplant from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that resists HIV infection. In contrast, the case of the Mississippi baby involved a cocktail ofwidely available drugs already used to treat HIV infectionin infants.It suggeststhe swift treatment wiped out HIV before it could form hideouts in the body. These so-called reservoirs of dormant cells usually rapidly re-infect anyone who stops medication, said Dr Persaud.
Dr Deborah Persaud, Johns Hopkins Children's Center:"This sets the stage for paediatric care agenda" The baby was born in a rural hospital where the mother had only justtested positive for HIV infection.Because the mother had not been given any prenatal HIV treatment, doctors knew the baby was at high risk of being infected.Researchers said the baby was then transferred to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.Once there, paediatric HIV specialist Dr Hannah Gay put the infant on a cocktail of threestandard HIV-fighting drugs atjust 30 hours old, even before laboratory tests came back confirming the infection."I just felt like this baby was at higher-than-normal risk and deserved our best shot," Dr Gay said.
http://www.mmegi.bw/index.php?sid=11&aid=1514&dir=2013/March/Tuesday5