Check out
this exciting news which appears to involve the
first HIV-positive child to be cured of AIDS. It offers hope for other newborn babies who are born with HIV for an AIDS-free life. This news story involves a Mississippi baby who was born with HIV and who began receiving treatment almost immediately following the birth:
Typically a newborn with an infected mother would be given one or two drugs as a prophylactic measure. But Dr. (Hannah) Gay said that based on her experience, she almost immediately used a three-drug regimen aimed at treatment, not prophylaxis, not even waiting for the test results confirming infection.
Virus levels rapidly declined with treatment and were undetectable by the time the baby was a month old. That remained the case until the baby was 18 months old, after which the mother stopped coming to the hospital and stopped giving the drugs.
When the mother and child returned five months later, Dr. Gay expected to see high viral loads in the baby. But the tests were negative. Suspecting a laboratory error, she ordered more tests. “To my greater surprise, all of these came back negative,” Dr. Gay said.
According to the New York Times, this is actually the second person to be cured of HIV. The first person was Timothy Brown (AKA "the Berlin patient"), who was treated with leukemia via a bone-marrow transplant from a doctor genetically resistant to HIV infection.
