Doctors 'find' HIV cure
Monday 04 March 2013
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EmailA baby girl in the US born with HIV appears to have been cured, doctors said today.
Paediatric HIV specialist Dr Hannah Gay (opposite above) started the Mississippi baby on standard drug therapy a mere 30 hours after the child's birth.
The virus has not returned even though the two-and-a-half-year-old has been off medication for a year.
Virologist Dr Deborah Persaud (opposite below) said: "This is a proof of concept that HIV can be potentially curable in infants."
Doctors believe the swift treatment wiped out the virus before it could establish "hideouts" in the body.
More research is needed to establish if the treatment would cure others.
The only other person to recover from HIV was Timothy Ray Brown who underwent a complex treatment for leukaemia involving the destruction of his immune system and a stem cell transplant.
But the cocktail of drugs used on the baby are all widely available.
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