Mississippi child 'functionally cured' of HIV

Scientists believe a little girl who was born with HIV 2.5 years ago is cured, according to NPR. Few details are known about the child due to privacy concerns, but she was born in Mississippi and is now a healthy toddler. Scientists involved in the case presented their findings at the 20^th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections held in Atlanta.

It is estimated that more than 330,000 children are infected by HIV at or near birth every year. Most of these cases occur in Africa, with fewer than 130 cases in the United States annually. The current treatment for children born with HIV is lifelong antiviral drugs to protect the immune system.

Hannah Gay, MD, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Mississippi, began treating the infant with antiviral drugs just 31 hours after she was born. The mother had no prenatal care, so the baby did not receive medication via the mother during pregnancy. The quick treatment is believed to be one of the factors playing a pivotal role in this situation. The other factor is that she was given higher than normal doses of three HIV drugs (the usual cocktail that has been in use since the mid-90s).

Over the next several months, the baby was monitored and tested for signs of HIV. No viruses were detected in her blood. After about 18 months, the child's mother stopped bringing her to her appointments. With assistance from the state health authorities, Gay was finally able to track down the child. The mother admitted that she had stopped giving her daughter the antiviral drugs six or seven months prior.

Worried that the child would be filled with infection, blood tests were run again. No evidence of the virus was found. Labs in Baltimore, Bethesda, Md. And San Diego have also run tests on the child's blood. Some pieces of HIV DNA and RNA have been found, but there is still no evidence that the virus is replicating. For this reason, it is being called a "functional cure" because the virus hasn't been totally eradicated.

Researchers believe that the early aggressive treatment kept viral reservoirs from forming in the baby's immune cells. Scientists believe these findings will encourage further work. If the results can be replicated, these findings will change the treatment approach for babies born with HIV all over the world. While plans are underway to determine if aggressive treatment early on can cure other babies born with HIV, it will be awhile before researchers can determine when it is safe to deliberately stop administering antiviral drugs.

Image courtesy of NIAID via Flickr.