Scientists claim to have cured a baby of the AIDS virus on Sunday, describing the case of a child from Mississippi who's now 2 1/2 and has been off medication for about a year with no signs of infection.
Specialists say Sunday's announcement, at a major AIDS meeting in Atlanta, offers promising clues for efforts to eliminate HIV infection in children, especially in AIDS-plagued African countries where too many babies are born with the virus, according to Huffington Post.
"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.
HIV treatments can hold the disease at bay, though stopping the drugs can be a death sentence since it allows infected cells secreted within the immune system to re-emerge, spreading the virus anew. Administering the mix of drugs right after birth may have stopped the virus from forming hidden reservoirs. If confirmed in further studies, the approach could help cure some of the 300,000 children infected each year with the AIDS-causing virus, stated jacksonville.com.
"Some babies here in the U.S. and Western Europe, and an awful lot of babies in the developing world don't have the opportunity for prevention," said Hannah Gay, who treated the infant at the University of Mississippi in Jackson. "There would be scores of babies that would benefit if we can find a strategy for intervention that allows us to make this happen in other babies," reported jacksonville.com.
However, she did make sure to stress that "We can't promise to cure babies who are infected. We can promise to prevent the vast majority of transmissions if the moms are tested during every pregnancy," according to Huffington Post.
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