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An HIV case first documented in a Mississippi baby 1 . 5 years ago is still proving that an antiviral treatment in early stages works well in not just treating herpes that causes AIDS, but additionally curing it.
Earlier this year, researchers from Johns Hopkins University (JHU) reported that a child born with HIV and given a series of antiviral drugs showed signs of remission within times of initial treatment. The kid was administered antiretroviral therapy (ART) for the next 1 . 5 years before ultimately being removed the drugs.
The researchers, led by Deborah Persaud, MD, of JHU, conducted a follow-up in late 2012 when the child was 23 months old and located that, after performing a battery of tests, the newborn was in full remission with no visible signs of HIV in the body. They presented their findings at the 2013 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta, Georgia.
Now, more than 6 months later, the same scientific study has conducted another follow-up and are happy to report that the kid, now Three years old, continues to be free of active infection 18 months in the end treatment ceased. A brand new set of the situation has been published in the Oct. 23 publication of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
“Our findings claim that this child’s remission isn’t a mere fluke however the likely consequence of aggressive and incredibly early therapy that could have prevented herpes from taking a hold in the child’s immune cells,” says Dr. Persaud, a virologist and pediatric HIV expert at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center (JHCC), that has been handling the situation because the child was born.
Persaud did about this case with immunologist Katherine Luzuriaga, MD, from the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and pediatrician Hannah Gay, MD, of the University of Mississippi Medical Center, who identified and treated the infant and continues to see the child.
“We’re thrilled the child remains off medication and it has no detectable virus replicating,” Gay says. “We’ve continued to follow along with the kid, obviously, and she or he continues to do very well. There isn’t any sign of the return of HIV, and we’ll continue to follow her for the long term.”
The child was created to an HIV-infected mother and was administered ART within 30 hours of birth. A series of tests within the subsequent days and weeks showed the ART was continuing to decrease the general existence of the virus within the child’s blood, until it reached undetectable levels 29 days after birth. At 18 months of age, the child was lost to follow-up for nearly five months, and ART stopped; however when checked to another five months, testing could still not detect virus in the bloodstream.
Persaud and colleagues say this one child’s experience provides “compelling evidence” that infants infected with HIV is capable of remission when ART begins within hours or times of birth or whenever infection begins. In line with the information from this case, a federally-funded study is placed to start in 2014 to check early-treatment ART to determine whether the approach is feasible for those HIV-infected newborns.
Persaud and colleagues maintain that swift intervention likely resulted in the youngsters remission because it halted the formation of hard-to-treat viral reservoirs
