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Doctors: Mississippi Baby ‘Functionally Cured’ of HIV

Mar. 3, 2013 10:37pm Erica Ritz

(TheBlaze/AP) — A baby born with the virus that causes AIDS appears to have been cured, scientists announced 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.

There’s no guarantee the child will remain healthy, although sophisticated testing uncovered just traces of the virus’ genetic material still lingering. If so, it would mark only the world’s second reported cure.

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.

“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.

After a woman came to the hospital in labor, unaware that she had HIV, the doctor chose to give the baby faster and stronger treatment than is usual, starting a three-drug infusion within 30 hours of birth of Zidovudine, Lamivudine and Nevirapine, Reuters reports. That was before tests confirmed the infant was infected, and not just at risk.

Doctors: Miracle Baby in Mississippi Functionally Cured of HIV

(Photo: Shutterstock/aslysun)

“I just felt like this baby was at higher-than-normal risk, and deserved our best shot,” Dr. Hannah Gay, a pediatric HIV specialist at the University of Mississippi, said in an interview.

That fast action apparently knocked out HIV in the baby’s blood before it could form hideouts in the body. Those so-called reservoirs of dormant cells usually rapidly reinfect anyone who stops medication, said Dr. Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. She led the investigation that deemed the child “functionally cured,” meaning in long-term remission even if all traces of the virus haven’t been completely eradicated.

Next, Persaud’s team is planning a study to try to prove that, with more aggressive treatment of other high-risk babies. “Maybe we’ll be able to block this reservoir seeding,” Persaud said.

“It opens up a lot of doors” to research if other children can be helped, he said. “It makes perfect sense what happened.”

Better than treatment is to prevent babies from being born with HIV in the first place, it seems.

About 300,000 children were born with HIV in 2011, mostly in poor countries where only about 60 percent of infected pregnant women get treatment that can keep them from passing the virus to their babies. In the U.S., such births are very rare because HIV testing and treatment long have been part of prenatal care.

“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,” Gay stressed.

This image provided by Johns Hopkins Medicine shows Dr. Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins’ Children’s Center in Baltimore. (AP/Johns Hopkins Medicine)

The only other person considered cured of the AIDS virus underwent a very different and risky kind of treatment – a bone marrow transplant from a special donor, one of the rare people who is naturally resistant to HIV. Timothy Ray Brown of San Francisco has not needed HIV medications in the five years since that transplant.

The Mississippi case shows “there may be different cures for different populations of HIV-infected people,” said Dr. Rowena Johnston of amFAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. That group funded Persaud’s team to explore possible cases of pediatric cures.

“This will likely inspire the field, make people more optimistic that this is possible,” he said.

In the Mississippi case, the mother had had no prenatal care when she came to a rural emergency room in advanced labor. A rapid test detected HIV. In such cases, doctors typically give the newborn low-dose medication in hopes of preventing HIV from taking root. But the small hospital didn’t have the proper liquid kind, and sent the infant to Gay’s medical center. She gave the baby higher treatment-level doses.

The child responded well through age 18 months, reports indicate, but then the family stopped treating their child for undisclosed reasons.

“At that point the mom admitted that she had not been giving the medicine for several months, and I expected the baby’s viral load to have gone back up,” Gay said. “But, when we drew the test we got back still an undetectable viral load. That was a surprise to me.”

Ten months after treatment stopped, a battery of super-sensitive tests at half a dozen laboratories found no sign of the virus’ return. There were only some remnants of genetic material that don’t appear able to replicate, Persaud said.

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.”

The mother’s HIV is being controlled with medication and she is “quite excited for her child,” Gay added.

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Comments (27)

dnewton
Posted on March 4, 2013 at 8:47pm
This is great! But when the researchers agree to get a transfusion from the child it will be even more convincing. Does this mean that homosexuals no longer need to seek long term relationships in order to avoid AIDS?

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Tigress1
Posted on March 4, 2013 at 8:45pm
Awesome!

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Tri-ox
Posted on March 4, 2013 at 5:36pm
Unbelievable – liberals are giving obama credit for this “cure” –

http://twitchy.com/2013/03/03/obama-deserves-credit-for-aids-cure/

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vaman
Posted on March 4, 2013 at 2:33pm
How many of you people will take this story and twist it in to a hate diatribe about gays? Come on, just admit you can’t help but express your biblically based hatred.

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- Voter713
  Posted on March 4, 2013 at 5:52pm
  @ Vaman – God’s Word doesnt promote hatred – “man” does
  
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- weisja4
  Posted on March 4, 2013 at 7:50pm
  Why did you put “man” in quotes?
  
  Report this comment
- Bill S.
  Posted on March 4, 2013 at 9:01pm
  WEISJA4 The reason they used “man” in quotes is because 1-2% of the population in the USA don’t KNOW what a “man” is!!!
  
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- galicant wiseword
  Posted on March 7, 2013 at 3:09am
  Ironic since you can’t seem to do anything but use every story to express your hatred of the Bible.
  
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Voter713
Posted on March 4, 2013 at 2:32pm
This is one step closer to an ultimate cure – I am proud to be a citizen of a state that is so low on the totem pole as far as, well, everything is concerned! Babies infected with this is so heartwrenching to think of – thanking God for this!

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- weisja4
  Posted on March 4, 2013 at 7:51pm
  If you are thanking god for a cure, are you also blaming god for the virus in the first place?
  
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searcher619
Posted on March 4, 2013 at 1:18pm
This is NOT a cure. This is a way to allow the child to live with the virus still in her system. The same thing happened with Magic Johnson. She still have the virus in her system. My question if she’s still able to spread it to others. When she gets older and wants to become sexually active will she be able to have sex without transmitting the virus to her partner? There’s a reason why we have never been able to cure a viral infection. Has nothing at all to do with the quality of healthcare or medicine. Has to do with the nature of the virus. The fact that they go through multiple generations in a very short time means they mutate at a very fast rate.

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Locked
Posted on March 4, 2013 at 11:23am
Hopefully good news for the baby, but “breakthrough” treatment articles like these are almost always not what they appear. “Cure” here is used by unrelated doctors who read the report and said “Hey, that sounds like a cure” (no, seriously. Go read the source articles. The only ones touting this as a cure are unrelated doctors). And the “cure” itself isn’t a cure; it just means that there are such trace amounts of HIV left in the blood stream that their tests can no longer detect them. It’s great news for the baby, as less HIV means a lower chance of AIDS; but it doesn’t mean the HIV is necessarily gone.

Still, a step forward is a step forward.We might not have a cure, but at least there’s promise of better treatment going forward.

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emberlyawake
Posted on March 4, 2013 at 4:47am
When was the last time we actually discovered a ‘cure’? Millions and millions of dollars in support and research and what we get is TREATMENTS. There’s much more money to be made in treating an illness, than curing one. If you think big pharma CARES about you, then maybe you should be on antipsychotics

A cure is out there. Just don’t expect pharmaceutical companies to market them.

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- Calm Voice of Reason
  Posted on March 4, 2013 at 11:44am
  I hear this sentiment from all the hippies around here. In order to make this claim, it is necessary to believe that pharmaceutical companies DON’T care about profits. There are numerous examples of companies working to actively undermine their competitors. Providing a “cure” to fix something another company provides “treatment” to automatically grants an advantage to you. We are past the golden age of medical science when novel approaches to medicine and new discoveries led to cures and treatments. Most of that ground has been covered so pharma now spends a great deal of time making incremental improvements to already existing compounds. Though their motives are highly dubious, and their results doubly so, it’s quite a stretch to say they have cures and are withholding them. There are many large problems with the development of medicine, but these conspiracy flavored sentiments are not among them. What is needed is more access to drug trial results, publishing negative studies, trial registries, and many more fixes to the way drug companies are able to pass FDA regulations. Republicans in Congress have overwhelmingly blocked Obama’s attempts to clean this up, and on the other side, Liberals are enamored with quackery like naturopathy and other such nonsense. I see no hope for reform coming from either side.
  
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HarryPotter
Posted on March 4, 2013 at 1:59am
While this is a remarkable scientific achievement, some of the commenters on here should be reminded that this has no relation to homosexuality or gay marriage. Let’s stay on topic here.
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- galicant wiseword
  Posted on March 7, 2013 at 3:15am
  Right because putting one’s reproduction half-life generator in an others’ waste removal compactor and egress is completely natural and healthy.
  
  http://news.yahoo.com/cdc-hiv-spread-high-young-gay-males-171032679.html
  
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whalevox
Posted on March 4, 2013 at 1:59am
So is it “functionally cured” like the chicken pox? Will it show in some twisted form later on like shingles does?

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GBTVFan_Non_American_Overseas
Posted on March 4, 2013 at 1:42am
Dr. Hannah Gay, an HIV specialist……

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The-Monk
Posted on March 4, 2013 at 12:59am
This has been possible since the early 90′s. There are 4 patents from Dr Kaali that the pharmaceutical companies bought that prove this. All it takes is 100ma of electricity. The problem is with adults. They always go back to sexual depravity and habits. The Children are innocent. This is nothing new. Don’t any of you read the weekly “Science News” journal? Check out Dr. Kaali, Science News 1990.

http://www.rexresearch.com/kaali/kaali.htm

Sorry. no q-u-e-e-r-s need apply. Go b-u-t-t- f-u-c-k yourselves to death. Leave the Children and the blood supply alone.

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South Philly Boy
Posted on March 4, 2013 at 12:40am
God Bless

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RaydocX
Posted on March 3, 2013 at 11:03pm
When any individual or group goes to the MSM crowing that they have ‘discovered’ something or ‘cured’ something I am skeptical…

What does ‘functionally cured’ mean? Traces of the virus genetics persist? So do we have a typhoid mary here, who will be unaffected but spread the virus? Is this I Am Legend born out?

Actually, I sadly suspect we are looking at a handful desperately seeking publicity, which even if for the purpose of getting more funding for research is misleading.

thanks, but I’ll wait for the peer reviewed paper in a Medical Journal showing statistics from say a few dozen ‘cures’ before I start jumping up and down that we ‘have a cure.’

After all, if you look at the lay press, at least once an hour you’re bombarded with some ‘increase your manhood’ formulation or ‘miracle weight loss’ cure… They’re all shams, and it’s disgusting that the networks allow ads spouting patently false claims, and that FDA or merely the FCC have not the guts or legal support to force advertisements to stick to the truth.

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Walkabout
Posted on March 3, 2013 at 11:01pm
It is a good day & hopefully rest of the life for the baby.

But I think people will draw the wrong conclusion from this. Expect some people to 1/2 listen to this, expect there is a cure for almost everything& throw caution to the wind.

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- Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra
  Posted on March 3, 2013 at 11:06pm
  I agree, that baby needs to grow up and stop partying so hard.
  
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RedheadTexan
Posted on March 3, 2013 at 11:00pm
This story is joyous and sad at the same time. Obviously the mother did not get proper prenatal care, or she would have known she had HIV. There is no reason for that. There are plenty of programs to allow women who can not afford it to get prenatal care. Then, after doctors go to extraordinary lengths to save her baby from HIV, she just stopped giving the baby the meds. In my book that is child abuse. It is just so sad.

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- catty
  Posted on March 4, 2013 at 12:14pm
  You mean programs like planned parenthood that provide prenatal care? Oh wait…
  
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- GardenoftheGods
  Posted on March 4, 2013 at 3:59pm
  I have to agree with you about the Mom not giving the baby his/her meds. HIV is an illness that you don’t mess around with. Someone needs to make sure the baby gets it’s meds for as long as necessary. Mom seems to be making sure that she’s taking her own medications; why not her child?
  
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Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra
Posted on March 3, 2013 at 10:51pm
They cured the baby of HIV, they said now the task of getting the baby into AA meetings, getting the face tattoo removed, and keeping it away from Bob Beckel, who admits, he is a bad influence on the baby.

The mother and father did turn down an offer from Fat Bast ard, but they admit, they will have to sleep on it.

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