Researchers show 'cautious optimism' on baby's HIV cure

Some of the 4,000 Aids researchers attending a conference in Atlanta yesterday awaited the scientific data showing that a Mississippi baby had indeed been cured of HIV before acknowledging its significance.

The breakthrough finding was announced at a press conference during the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections on Sunday but attendees were keen to see the full science behind the case.

The girl, who has not been identified and is from rural Mississippi, was born HIV positive in 2010 to a mother who herself was not diagnosed as HIV positive until she was in labour. Mothers are typically treated in advance to prevent the virus being transmitted to the baby.

The baby was treated aggressively with antiretroviral drugs at the University of Mississippi Medical Centre from about 30 hours after her birth.

Dr Hannah Gay, an associate professor of paediatrics, used drugs aimed at treating the virus in the baby, as opposed to prophylactic measures, which seek to prevent the disease infecting the baby.

No virus detected

Over the following months the virus levels in the baby rapidly declined and the virus could not be detected at all when she stopped being treated with antiviral drugs at the age of 18 months.

This is the second person to be cured after Timothy Brown, a middle-aged American living in Germany, underwent a bone marrow transplant that cured him of both leukaemia and HIV. The scientific data behind the case of the Mississippi child, now two years old, has yet to be verified by other researchers.

If the findings of the research report released on Sunday are confirmed, it raises hope for the work to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids to an estimated 330,000 children born with the disease.

“The feeling is one of cautious optimism,” said Mark Harrington, executive director of the Treatment Action Group, an Aids research organisation, and an attendee at the Atlanta conference.

Key question

“The key question has to do with the clarity that the baby was infected in the first place. It is good news indeed but many of us are waiting to see what the data is.”

The potential development from the Mississippi case, however, may not just create a treatment for children in the US where the numbers born with HIV are “infinitesimal” but may help children born around the world to HIV-positive mothers, said Kevin Frost, chief executive of the Foundation for Aids Research, which funded the project to examine possible paediatric cures for children with HIV.

“It holds enormous potential because of the way we treat children. It has the potential to teach us something new in how to treat people with HIV,” he said. “The next step is to look at curing more children. You want to be sure that this wasn’t just a fluke, a once-off. You want to be able to cure more children and where you can get to a protocol to cure all children.”

Science depends on replication and research activists were unsure whether this case could help adults beyond the early stages of HIV.

Tim Horn of the Treatment Action Group said the case may prove “an exciting boost” to the treatment of adults immediately exposed to the virus.

“These new study results definitely show that medications already available to us are going to be an important part of the hunt for curative approaches,” he said.