Scanning electron micrograph of HIV particles infecting a human T cellWIKIMEDIA, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTHA South African girl has been living with HIV for more than eight, drug-free years after being diagnosed as a one-month-old baby and treated aggressively for the infection, report researchers at an international AIDS conference in Paris. The patient, now nine years old, received 40 weeks of antiretroviral therapy (ART) as a baby before doctors stopped all treatment to see if her immune system would fend off the infection on its own.
“Further study is needed to learn how to induce long-term HIV remission in infected babies,” Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)—which funded the 2007 clinical trial in which the girl participated—says in a statement. “However, this new case strengthens our hope that by treating HIV-infected children for a brief period beginning in infancy, we may be able to spare them the burden of life-long therapy and the health consequences of long-term immune activation typically associated with HIV disease.”
Although researchers did find HIV in some of the girl’s immune cells, the virus did not appear to be capable of replicating, and the scientists failed to find any evidence of an active HIV infection. “To our knowledge, this is ...
