Baby Which Born With HIV Apparently Healed, Scientists Announced in Atlanta

U.S. researchers announced on Sunday at the 2013 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta, that a 2 years old baby girl in Mississippi who was born with HIV has been cured after very early treatment with standard HIV drugs.  According to the researchers; an early intervention — in this case within 30 hours of birth — with three anti-viral drugs was the key to the outcome.

Despite the fact that the findings seems to be encouraging scientists warned they are not the definitive cure for HIV. It is thought to have been the speed and intensity of the action that is actually knocked out HIV inside of the baby's blood just before it could form a hideouts inside the body system However not every traces of the virus have already been eradicated. Dr Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins Children's Center, who led the investigation, stated that the child was in effect "functionally cured", meaning in long-term remission even if all traces of the virus have never been entirely eradicated.

The treatment certainly will not mix in older children or adults mainly because the virus usually have already infected cells. The total number of babies born with HIV in modern countries has dropped drastically with the advance of more suitable drugs and prevention.Commonly, women with HIV are given antiretroviral drugs in the course of pregnancy to reduce the virus in their blood. Their babies go on courses of drugs, too, to diminish their risk of infection further. The strategy can certainly stop around 98% of HIV transmission from mother to child.About 300,000 children were actually born with HIV in 2011. In the US these kinds of births are very rare as HIV testing and treatment long have been part of prenatal care. "We can't promise to cure babies who are infected. We can promise to prevent the vast majority of transmissions if the moms are tested during every pregnancy," said Dr Hannah Gay, of the University of Mississippi.