That baby 'cured' of HIV maybe never had it at all to begin with
Published: 2013 March 14 12:03:48 (5162 Views)
The celebratory "game-changer" that the whole world experienced last week of a
Mississippi baby girl born with HIV who had been cured might have been a bit
premature. It seems the news spread quickly through media outlets around the
world before it was actually presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta.
According to Mark Siedner from the Wall Street Journal, researchers who presented the case on March 4 stated that a baby girl, born in Mississippi to a woman with HIV, was found with HIV in her blood shortly after birth.
Care providers quickly started the infant on a full set of three HIV medicines (typically, only one or two are used in exposed babies to prevent infection).
"The medicines were continued for 18 months, after which mother and child went missing from care. When they returned after almost five months without medicines, no evidence of active HIV infection was found in the child. The medical team performed an exhaustive array of tests to try to confirm the prior presence of HIV and its subsequent eradication, and to rule out rare forms of resistance to HIV infection."
Was the baby infected with HIV and, thus, cured?
To many of the researchers at the conference, the answer is "no." It seems more likely that her treatment prevented her, after exposure to HIV, from being infected. The reason we give medicines to both pregnant women and their newborns is precisely to prevent HIV exposures in children from becoming established infections, an intervention that can decrease the rate of transmission from about 30% to less than 1% in optimal conditions.
Mark Siedner: About That Baby Who Was 'Cured' of HIV
- WSJ
According to Mark Siedner from the Wall Street Journal, researchers who presented the case on March 4 stated that a baby girl, born in Mississippi to a woman with HIV, was found with HIV in her blood shortly after birth.
Care providers quickly started the infant on a full set of three HIV medicines (typically, only one or two are used in exposed babies to prevent infection).
"The medicines were continued for 18 months, after which mother and child went missing from care. When they returned after almost five months without medicines, no evidence of active HIV infection was found in the child. The medical team performed an exhaustive array of tests to try to confirm the prior presence of HIV and its subsequent eradication, and to rule out rare forms of resistance to HIV infection."
Was the baby infected with HIV and, thus, cured?
To many of the researchers at the conference, the answer is "no." It seems more likely that her treatment prevented her, after exposure to HIV, from being infected. The reason we give medicines to both pregnant women and their newborns is precisely to prevent HIV exposures in children from becoming established infections, an intervention that can decrease the rate of transmission from about 30% to less than 1% in optimal conditions.
Mark Siedner: About That Baby Who Was 'Cured' of HIV
- WSJ
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