News that a baby seems to have been functionally cured of HIV after
early intervention has piqued the interest of the medical community
worldwide and raised hopes that the procedure could be used to more
easily and effectively prevent mother-to-child transmission of the
virus. More than 3 million children are currently living with the virus
that causes AIDS.
Doctors made the announcement Sunday at the 20th annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Atlanta.
The timing of the intervention -- about 30 hours after the baby was born -- may have been the key to success, doctors involved with the case said.
The current procedure for high-risk infants is a regimen of smaller doses of antiretroviral drugs until a blood test confirms HIV when the baby is six weeks old. But knowing that this baby was at high risk, Dr. Hannah Gay decided not to wait for the results, and started the baby on high doses of three standard drugs used for HIV-positive babies as soon as the baby was transferred to her at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. The child is now 2 ½ and has no signs of the functioning virus.
While pediatric AIDS researchers were surprised, and while they reiterate the need for the procedure to be repeated, they said it makes sense that the treatment worked. Persaud offered one hypothesis that she and Dr. Katherine Luzuriaga, an immunologist at the University of Massachusetts, plan on testing in clinical trials in the next few months: The HIV virus usually establishes itself in reservoirs where it stays in a dormant state.
Doctors made the announcement Sunday at the 20th annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Atlanta.
The timing of the intervention -- about 30 hours after the baby was born -- may have been the key to success, doctors involved with the case said.
A Way to Fight the AIDS Virus With a Virus
“Early treatment most likely contributed to the outcome of this child, but whether it's the only intervention that allowed this outcome is unclear and requires further study,” said Deborah Persaud, associate professor at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and author of the report on the baby.The current procedure for high-risk infants is a regimen of smaller doses of antiretroviral drugs until a blood test confirms HIV when the baby is six weeks old. But knowing that this baby was at high risk, Dr. Hannah Gay decided not to wait for the results, and started the baby on high doses of three standard drugs used for HIV-positive babies as soon as the baby was transferred to her at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. The child is now 2 ½ and has no signs of the functioning virus.
While pediatric AIDS researchers were surprised, and while they reiterate the need for the procedure to be repeated, they said it makes sense that the treatment worked. Persaud offered one hypothesis that she and Dr. Katherine Luzuriaga, an immunologist at the University of Massachusetts, plan on testing in clinical trials in the next few months: The HIV virus usually establishes itself in reservoirs where it stays in a dormant state.
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