SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
'Breakthrough': Baby Born with HIV Now 'Effectively Cured'
Hope follows that other newborns, especially those in developing nations, can benefit from the treatment
Mar 04, 2013
Doctors at medical conference focused on AIDS treatment on Sunday announced that an infant born with the HIV has been "effectively cured" of the virus, offering hope that the treatment the child received could be replicated for other newborns who contract the disease from their mothers.
Calling it part of "medical history," researchers said the child is expected to live a normal life and would likely not be able to transmit the disease.
"This is a proof of concept that HIV can be potentially curable in infants," said Dr. Deborah Persaud, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who presented the findings.
"You could call this about as close to a cure, if not a cure, that we've seen," Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health, who is familiar with the findings, told The Associated Press.
Al-Jazeera reports:
The baby girl was born in a rural hospital in the state of Mississippi and her mother had just tested positive for HIV infection.
A team of doctors at the University of Mississippi Medical Centre in Jackson then put the infant on a cocktail of three standard HIV-fighting drugs when she was just 30 hours old.
That fast action apparently knocked out the HIV in the baby's blood before it could form reservoirs in the body.
The new findings could be especially critical for AIDS-plagued African countries where many babies are born with the virus, researchers said.
And The Guardian adds:
The treatment would not work in older children or adults because the virus will have already infected their CD4 cells.
"Prompt antiviral therapy in newborns that begins within days of exposure may help infants clear the virus and achieve long-term remission without lifelong treatment by preventing such viral hideouts from forming in the first place," said Dr Persaud. "Our next step is to find out if this is a highly unusual response to very early antiretroviral therapy or something we can actually replicate in other high-risk newborns."
Children infected with HIV are given antiretroviral drugs with the intent to treat them for life, and Gay warned that anyone who takes the drugs must remain on them.
"It is far too early for anyone to try stopping effective therapy just to see if the virus comes back," she said.
Until scientists better understand how they cured the child, Gay emphasised that prevention is the most reliable way to stop babies contracting the virus from infected mothers. "Prevention really is the best cure, and we already have proven strategies that can prevent 98% of newborn infections by identifying and treating HIV-positive women," she said.
____________________________
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Doctors at medical conference focused on AIDS treatment on Sunday announced that an infant born with the HIV has been "effectively cured" of the virus, offering hope that the treatment the child received could be replicated for other newborns who contract the disease from their mothers.
Calling it part of "medical history," researchers said the child is expected to live a normal life and would likely not be able to transmit the disease.
"This is a proof of concept that HIV can be potentially curable in infants," said Dr. Deborah Persaud, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who presented the findings.
"You could call this about as close to a cure, if not a cure, that we've seen," Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health, who is familiar with the findings, told The Associated Press.
Al-Jazeera reports:
The baby girl was born in a rural hospital in the state of Mississippi and her mother had just tested positive for HIV infection.
A team of doctors at the University of Mississippi Medical Centre in Jackson then put the infant on a cocktail of three standard HIV-fighting drugs when she was just 30 hours old.
That fast action apparently knocked out the HIV in the baby's blood before it could form reservoirs in the body.
The new findings could be especially critical for AIDS-plagued African countries where many babies are born with the virus, researchers said.
And The Guardian adds:
The treatment would not work in older children or adults because the virus will have already infected their CD4 cells.
"Prompt antiviral therapy in newborns that begins within days of exposure may help infants clear the virus and achieve long-term remission without lifelong treatment by preventing such viral hideouts from forming in the first place," said Dr Persaud. "Our next step is to find out if this is a highly unusual response to very early antiretroviral therapy or something we can actually replicate in other high-risk newborns."
Children infected with HIV are given antiretroviral drugs with the intent to treat them for life, and Gay warned that anyone who takes the drugs must remain on them.
"It is far too early for anyone to try stopping effective therapy just to see if the virus comes back," she said.
Until scientists better understand how they cured the child, Gay emphasised that prevention is the most reliable way to stop babies contracting the virus from infected mothers. "Prevention really is the best cure, and we already have proven strategies that can prevent 98% of newborn infections by identifying and treating HIV-positive women," she said.
____________________________
Doctors at medical conference focused on AIDS treatment on Sunday announced that an infant born with the HIV has been "effectively cured" of the virus, offering hope that the treatment the child received could be replicated for other newborns who contract the disease from their mothers.
Calling it part of "medical history," researchers said the child is expected to live a normal life and would likely not be able to transmit the disease.
"This is a proof of concept that HIV can be potentially curable in infants," said Dr. Deborah Persaud, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who presented the findings.
"You could call this about as close to a cure, if not a cure, that we've seen," Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health, who is familiar with the findings, told The Associated Press.
Al-Jazeera reports:
The baby girl was born in a rural hospital in the state of Mississippi and her mother had just tested positive for HIV infection.
A team of doctors at the University of Mississippi Medical Centre in Jackson then put the infant on a cocktail of three standard HIV-fighting drugs when she was just 30 hours old.
That fast action apparently knocked out the HIV in the baby's blood before it could form reservoirs in the body.
The new findings could be especially critical for AIDS-plagued African countries where many babies are born with the virus, researchers said.
And The Guardian adds:
The treatment would not work in older children or adults because the virus will have already infected their CD4 cells.
"Prompt antiviral therapy in newborns that begins within days of exposure may help infants clear the virus and achieve long-term remission without lifelong treatment by preventing such viral hideouts from forming in the first place," said Dr Persaud. "Our next step is to find out if this is a highly unusual response to very early antiretroviral therapy or something we can actually replicate in other high-risk newborns."
Children infected with HIV are given antiretroviral drugs with the intent to treat them for life, and Gay warned that anyone who takes the drugs must remain on them.
"It is far too early for anyone to try stopping effective therapy just to see if the virus comes back," she said.
Until scientists better understand how they cured the child, Gay emphasised that prevention is the most reliable way to stop babies contracting the virus from infected mothers. "Prevention really is the best cure, and we already have proven strategies that can prevent 98% of newborn infections by identifying and treating HIV-positive women," she said.
____________________________
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.