Baby Born with HIV Appears to Have Been Cured

It has been announced that a baby born with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) – that which causes AIDS – appears to have been cured of the disease. The announcement came out on Sunday and described the case of a child from Mississippi that is now 2 ? years old. While scientists indicate that there is not a guarantee that the child will stay healthy, testing has shown that only tiny traces of genetic material associated with HIV remain in the child’s system. In the event that the cure is definitively confirmed, it will be the second known cure ever.

"You could call this about as close to a cure, if not a cure, that we've seen," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, from the National Institutes of Health. In this child’s case, a doctor gave the baby a stronger treatment than is typical, and administered that treatment just 30 hours after birth, much sooner than the norm. The treatment occurred before the child was tested – at the time of treatment the baby was only known to be at risk because its mother was diagnosed with HIV while she was in labor.

"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. After being tested by doctors from Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, the child was determined to be "functionally cured." That means that the disease is in long-term remission even though there are traces of the virus still in evidence. Gay was quick to note that this cure, while important, isn’t a panacea. She said, "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."

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