A team of American scientists assures that it has achievedcure an HIV-infected baby by initiating aggressive antiretroviral therapy in the first 30 hours of life. According to the newspaper yesterday, SundayNew York Timesand the SINC agency reproduces today, the rapid treatment received by the newborn is “something that normally does not happen, but if more studies prove its usefulness, it could be recommended as a global strategy.” Until now, only one case of HIV cure in an infected adult, Timothy Brown – known as the Berlin patient – was known, thanks to a bone marrow transplant following leukemia.
“For pediatrics, this is our Timothy Brown,” explained the study leader, Deborah Persaud, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University (USA), in a press conference prior to the presentation of the findings that will take place during the 20th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), held these days in Atlanta (USA).
Even ifthe results have not yet been published in any specialized journal, the doctor assured that this finding “is proof that we can cure HIV infection if we can replicate this case.” However,epidemiologists argue that to confirm the achievement it is necessary to convince that the baby was actually infected. If not, it would be a case of prevention, something already achieved in babies born to infected mothers.
For their part, Persaud’s team maintains that the infant’s exposure to HIV was confirmed by five positive tests in the baby’s first month of life – four for viral RNA and one for DNA. In addition, the interruption of infection was assessed by assays of plasma viral load, proviral DNA, and HIV antibody testing. The researchers point out that, once the treatment was started, the levels of the virus in the baby’s blood were considerably reduced according to the characteristic pattern of infected patients.
“This is thefirst well-documented case of functional cure in a child with HIV, suggesting that very early antiretroviral therapy may prevent the establishment of a latent depot and achieve cure in children, ”the authors conclude.
