#HIV 'cure' girl still has virus
An American girl born with HIV and in remission for years despite stopping treatment is showing signs that she still has the virus and therefore is not cured. The news is a setback to hopes that very early doses of powerful drugs might eliminate the infection that causes Aids.
The Mississippi girl is now nearly four and as recently as March doctors had said she seemed free of HIV despite not having been on medication for about two years. The case was regarded as a medical first.
But tests last week showed she was no longer in remission. She was back on treatment and responding well, doctors said.
The news was "obviously disappointing" and may have implications for a federal study that had been about to start testing early aggressive treatment in such cases, said Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
"We're going to take a good hard look at the study and see if it needs any modifications," either in terms of length and type of treatment or because of ethical concerns over raising false hopes about an approach that now had suffered a setback, Fauci said.
Most HIV-infected mothers in the US get anti-HIV medicines during pregnancy, which greatly cuts the chances they will pass the virus to their babies. The Mississippi baby's mother did not receive them and her HIV was discovered during labour. Because of the baby's great risk of infection doctors started her on unusually powerful treatment 30 hours after birth, even before tests could determine whether she had the virus.
The girl was treated until she was 18 months old, when doctors lost contact with her. Ten months later when she returned they could find no sign of infection even though the mother had stopped giving her Aids medicines.
Tests repeatedly showed no detectable HIV until last week, when the virus was detected in her blood. Doctors have said they don't know why the virus rebounded when it did.
In March doctors revealed that a second baby born with HIV may have had her infection put into remission by very early treatment, four hours after her birth in suburban Los Angeles in April 2013. Nearly a year later very sophisticated tests at multiple times suggested she had been completely cleared of the virus, but she remains on treatment so there is no way to know for sure.
Only one other person is thought to have been cured of HIV infection: a San Francisco man who had a bone marrow transplant in 2007 from a donor with natural resistance to the virus. More than five years later he showed no sign of infection
guardian
Comments
Post a Comment