Tue 5 Mar 2013 In: International News View at Wayback View at NDHA
HIV virus attached to a cell American doctors have confirmed that a baby born with HIV has been cured of the infectious disease. Whilst most babies born to HIV-positive mothers are born without the disease, thanks to a drug regime administered to pregnant mothers, the mother at the centre of this remarkable case was not known to be infected until she was already giving birth. The baby was immediately treated with intensive courses of standard HIV drugs and though subsequent tests showed it was infected at birth it is, two years later, "functionally cured" of the virus, according to US researchers. HIV operates by infecting the body's immune cells, thus both weakening the immune system and hijacking the reproductive ability of the cells. Under aggressive drug regimes the virus can be all but repressed but remains in minute quantities in unknown reservoirs within the body, ready to swamp the immune system again if the drug regime fails or is swapped. By far the majority of HIV/AIDS cases in New Zealand are amongst gay and bisexual men. US doctors say there is as yet no clear indication of the mechanism by which they baby was cured or if, or how, the discovery might be applied to other people.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Tuesday, 5th March 2013 - 11:06pm