HIV in infants cured

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HavocXphere

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Nearly bringing a tear to my eye.

That's awesome/encouraging news! :)
 
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Slightly misleading title. Should read "One infant possibly cured". But if this proves to be accurate, it would be a massive victory in the fight against HIV (And AIDS for everyone except Mbeki and his denialist camp)
 
How's it promising though? Chances are good that infant will be an orphan :(
 
Infant not infants.

It's also not cured, as there are still traces of the virus left. It just appears to be dormant. Similar to a cancer patient in remission.
 
Am I missing something?

Stopping the virus taking hold soon after infection is exactly what ARVs were created to do. This looks to me like claiming you were cured of HIV when you get infected through a needlestick injury but you take ARVs and they destroy the virus before it can infiltrate your system fully.
 
porchrat said:
Am I missing something?

Stopping the virus taking hold soon after infection is exactly what ARVs were created to do. This looks to me like claiming you were cured of HIV when you get infected through a needlestick injury but you take ARVs and they destroy the virus before it can infiltrate your system fully.
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Wasn't she infected since she was in the womb? Not just right after she was born.
 
porchrat said:
Am I missing something?

Stopping the virus taking hold soon after infection is exactly what ARVs were created to do. This looks to me like claiming you were cured of HIV when you get infected through a needlestick injury but you take ARVs and they destroy the virus before it can infiltrate your system fully.
Click to expand...

Yes ARVs can stop an infection when you have a needle stick injury and it can prevent mother to child transmission. It cannot however cure a functional disease i.e once the virus has set in and begun replicating within the cd4 cells ARVs can only contain the virus.
 
my guess here is a false positive. might be wrong though
 
winner said:
my guess here is a false positive. might be wrong though
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possible, but i highly doubt it. I dont think anyone would allow a publication of any sort with their name on it for a false positive. They must have done extensive blood work to make sure before publication especially with their names in the publication
 
Sinbad said:
How's it promising though? Chances are good that infant will be an orphan :(
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Unlikely, HIV isnt like how it used to be 10 years ago. People live long healthy lives being HIV positive now, obviously not as long as a healthy HIV negative individual but its really hard to tell the difference with lifespan now. AIDS is no longer the leading cause of death due to infection, it was in the early 2000s but now TB has over taken it and this can be acredited to the ARV programme
 
RiaX said:
possible, but i highly doubt it. I dont think anyone would allow a publication of any sort with their name on it for a false positive. They must have done extensive blood work to make sure before publication especially with their names in the publication
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good point but this is between that, or a cure because of drugs that are used on millions of people(including newborns) worldwide without curing one up until now. the other alternative explanation is perinatal infection would explain why ARVs given within 30hours worked. until they actually do clinical trials, i am not convinced.

*Edited*
 
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Mystic Twilight said:
"A cocktail of drugs", side effects?
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sloth-goonies.jpg
 
abzo said:
Wasn't she infected since she was in the womb? Not just right after she was born.
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With the modern drugs it is very unlikely that the child is infected in the womb. Here though it looks like you are right. Mother didn't know she was positive and so didn't get the drugs. Infant also had higher than expected viral load.

Foolish of the mother to not get tested.


RiaX said:
Yes ARVs can stop an infection when you have a needle stick injury and it can prevent mother to child transmission. It cannot however cure a functional disease i.e once the virus has set in and begun replicating within the cd4 cells ARVs can only contain the virus.
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The article clearly states that they believe they have eliminated the virus by preventing it from forming viral reservoirs. That is what ARVs do already. What we really should be asking is why hadn't the virus formed viral reservoirs already if the child was infected in the womb early on in the pregnancy?

If the child wasn't infected early on and instead was infected in the later stages of the pregnancy then again I'm not exactly shocked, this is what ARVs do, they act as a prophylaxis when taken after the initial contact with HIV.
 
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