Mississippi Baby Born With HIV "Functionally Cured" According to Doctors

An unidentified Mississippi two-year-old child who was born with the AIDS virus has apparently been cured with an aggressive drug regiment. This new development reported by researchers this Sunday, could easily do wonders for thousands of infants born each year with HIV. This is the second documented case of a patient being cured of HIV, but the first baby. The first was a man known as the "Berlin Man" who was cured by a 2007 bone-marrow transplant.

This case, according to researchers, is just a one-off situation and does not guarantee a cure. Although if further study confirms that an early detection and treatment of HIV-infected newborns with this aggressive regiment is affective, it could be implemented from here on out. The current World Health Organization guidelines call for "a modest daily dose of antiretroviral treatment for four to six weeks-or until testing determines the baby's own HIV status." The more serious treatment starts after the baby tests positive. But when doctors decided to start with the tougher regiment within 31 hours of this child's birth, they ultimately found the cure. Apparently, "the drugs prevented the formation of so-called viral reservoirs that harbor the virus."

Pediatrician and AIDS researcher Deborah Persaud said that in this case "the child got therapy and then went off therapy, and now there's no detectable virus. That's really unheard of. If people go off therapy, most of them rebound...within a few weeks."

The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the number of infants born with HIV was down to 174 in 2010. This baby girl born in Mississippi in that year is now the first child to be considered cured of the disease. After being transferred to the University of Mississippi Medical Center for HIV treatment, Doctor Hannah Gay, a pediatrician and infectious-disease expert, started her on three standard antiretroviral drugs at higher, treatment-level doses. This treatment continued for about a year until the mother ceased the child's check ups after 18 months. Dr. Gay found the child and ordered a test since she had been off therapy for about 5 months. The test could not find the virus. Confused, Dr. Gay checked the child's records confirming that the infection was indeed there before and then opened a study into the case. The analyses from a number of labs using distinctive techniques "confirms to us that this is a case of 'functional cure,' meaning that the virus hasn't rebounded and that...we can't detect virus activity in this child," Dr. Persaud said.