Baby cured of HIV in the USA

A baby girl in the US born with HIV appears to have been cured after very early treatment with standard drug therapy, doctors say.

The Mississippi child is now two-and-a-half years old and has been off medication for about a year with no signs of infection.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21651225

This is a very promising treatment. However, there are some important caveats, of course.

1. This is likely only applicable to newborn infants that were infected while in the womb. This will have little impact in the United States, where infant HIV infections are relatively tiny, but it has massive implications for countries experiencing widespread infant HIV infection.

2. It remains to be seen if there are developmental side effects to pumping a 30-hour-old infant with retroviral drugs. While HIV/AIDS is a terrible condition, this will be a less viable treatment method if it causes significant physical or mental development problems.

Still, this is pretty amazing news. Of course, since this has been done in only one child, it's unknown how effective this is at large.

If the treatment is viable it's a tremendous boon to African nations.

From the NPR report it's not to different from the HIV cocktail they give to rape victims

Jacien: Yeah, these are the countries that will benefit most from this discovery, if it holds as viable. It should definitely be pursued and explored with all due haste for this reason alone.

Saint: Yeah, that's about what it is. There are several standard antiretroviral drug cocktails which can be administered to combat HIV and it's becoming very clear that the sooner they are administered after infection, the less likely the virus will be able to gain a sufficient foothold for AIDS to manifest.

However, these drug cocktails have only really been tested on adults, and even then there are some side effects. However, they're temporary and well worth it to stop an HIV infection. I don't believe their effect on infants is known, especially if the infant is having to continually take them for a period of time.

In related news http://io9.com/5989525/nanoparticles-made-from-bee-venom-can-kill-hiv

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Sounds like really good news :D

Something new on this: More HIV 'cured': first a baby, now 14 adults