Baby Girl With HIV Might Be Cured

A baby girl born with the HIV virus may have been cured as a result of very early treatment, US doctors have said.
The California child is the second case in which doctors may have brought HIV into a remission in a newborn.
The announcement, made at a medical conference in Boston, raises hopes that a way to rid babies of the virus that leads to AIDS may have been found.

"The child ... has become HIV-negative," said Dr Deborah Persaud, a paediatrics specialist with the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
The girl was born in suburban Los Angeles last April. Doctors started administering anti-retroviral drugs just four hours after birth.
She is still receiving a three-drug cocktail of anti-AIDS treatments, but Dr Persaud said a series of sophisticated tests at multiple times have suggested the baby has been completely cleared of the virus.

A child born in Mississippi, now nearly four years old, ceased receiving anti-retroviral treatments two years ago after also appearing to have been cured.
However, it will take years to determine whether the treatment has worked.
In another AIDS-related development, scientists have modified genes in the blood cells of a dozen adults to help them resist HIV.

The results give hope that this approach might one day free at least some people from needing medicines to keep HIV under control. That study on the gene approach was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The human immuno-deficiency virus, or HIV, surfaced more than 30 years ago and now infects more than 34 million people worldwide.
Prevention measures, including condoms, have helped check its spread and antiretroviral drugs can now control the disease for decades, meaning it is no longer a death sentence.