A Mississippi baby born with HIV more than two years ago appears to be the first documented case of a child’s being cured of the virus, according to doctors and scientists. The unidentified child has now been “functionally cured” and has been off medication for about a year with no signs of the HIV infection. If the child remains healthy, it would mark only the second time in the world’s history that a person has been cured of HIV, which is the virus that causes AIDS.
The landmark case was announced Sunday at the 2013 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta. Dr. Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore was one of the lead researchers and author of the report, which was released by The Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR). The infant was diagnosed with HIV at birth to a mother who did not receive prenatal care or HIV treatment, Dr. Rowena Johnston, director of amfAR, told ABC News.
The infant was transferred to the University of Mississippi Medical Center and started on antiretroviral treatment about 30 hours after birth. Doctors took the apparently unusual step of prescribing three aggressive drugs (AZT, 3TC, nevirapine) at once after birth. Johnston points to the early intervention of the three medications as the difference-maker. Initial HIV viral load tests were high and then expectedly decreased in the first month. Viral loads were detectable three times and became undetectable by one month of age.
The baby was on treatment and in care until 12 to 15 months of age, at which point the baby was lost to follow-up after doctors lost contact with the mother and the baby stopped receiving any medication. The baby returned for care at 23 months of age. Surprisingly, viral loads were still undetectable, despite being off treatment for almost a year. Johnston said the results were all the more shocking because doctors do not usually recommend stopping treatment at any time in children with HIV from birth.
The results surprised Dr. Hannah Gay, a pediatric HIV specialist at the University of Mississippi, who was treating the child. “My first thought was to panic. I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, I have been treating a child who is not actually infected,’” she said. A battery of “highly sensitive” tests confirmed the absence of HIV, according to a news release. In Mississippi, Gay gives the child a check-up every few months. “I just check for the virus and keep praying that it stays gone,” she told The Associated Press.
The mother’s HIV is being controlled with medication and she is “quite excited for her child,” Gay added. The only other documented case of an HIV cure to date remains that of Timothy Brown, the so-called “Berlin patient.”
Skeptics said that this story of the cure child is not really conclusive. They say that the girl – although at high risk for contracting the virus from her mother – was not actually infected. This story shows no actual proof that the child was indeed born with HIV. On the other hand it mentions that the child, being at high risk of infection, was placed on treatment even before laboratory investigations had been done. That being said, doctors agree that the child was most likely infected, so it remains a story of hope