First Case of a Child Cured of HIV

Here's The Full Story

So a child in Mississippi was born to a mother who had been recently found that she was HIV positive. 30 hours after the child's birth the child was started on drugs that are typically given to people who are HIV positive. These drugs were actually given to her prior to the child officially being diagnosed with HIV because the main doctor felt that the chances of the child being HIV positive was high enough that it was worth it. It was suggested that this drug treatment worked because;

"...before [the virus] could form hideouts in the body."

This means that this treatment might lead to a cure for children diagnosed with HIV. Which is incredible.

Wait, was there ever any proof the kid had HIV? I've heard of children being born HIV free from HIV parents (mostly in a "it's a miracle", sentimental tone, though).

It was confirmed through laboratory tests after the drug treatment had been started.

Then yea, this sounds pretty big.

Wow, that's great news.

Huge news for medicine. And a huge congratulations to that family. I bet they're just ecstatic.

Damn that's some really awesome news.

It needs to happen again, and not just once to be anything other than a theory, great for that kid though.

I just saw this on Gizmodo! Like, right now. ~ Cool, though.

It's a hint from God. Great news, indeed.

awesome news

This certainly opens the door for having more study of possibly giving HIV-positive children more medicine faster and then even getting them off of it eventually. We'll probably see children taken off of their medication to see if they too have been cured of it, as the ending of medication is part of why they believe this is the first case. It may actually be something that has been happening in various cases for years now.

Considering how many children each year are diagnosed with HIV, this is hopeful news.

Great stuff! Hopefully the good news on this keeps coming.

It was an infant, so that's kinda like cheating. Create a cure for an adult and maybe I'll be impressed.

There was a case not too long ago of a guy who was cured, although the medical community has been reluctant to use that term with him. Technically, there's no trace of HIV in his blood anymore, but there's no telling whether it's going to be permanent or not.

In any event, it's coming along. Certainly a far cry from the 80s and early 90s when it was an almost immediate death sentence. Hopefully progress like this can be made on more and more maladies in the coming years. Chronic illness is the worst thing on earth.

You're a hard person to please.

mutherfuckin' Science. Where's your God now, huh ?

Yeah, they mentioned that guy in the article. He went through a really odd, non-standardized series of treatments that would be really hard to do consistently. What's great about this baby was that the drugs used were standard drugs which would be relatively easy to use with someone else.

Ugh, I hate that "cured" has to be in quotes. I suppose it's another step, progress is good.

The point is that it's a cure, period. It's impressive to say the least and definitely a breakthrough of some kind.

"Curing" a disease that's in an early stage isn't exactly the same as curing a disease that's already in effect.

Don't know if this is serious or not. I really hope religious people don't try let their God take the credit for this. I mean, religion is a pretty serious contributor to the unnecessary spread of AIDS in the developing world. Was that a hint from God to? Or do you only conviently associate good feelings with God?

Lets leave this whole topic free of controversy. This is something amazing we should be happy about. Lets not bring it down with calling out people's beliefs for no good reason.

what the fuck are you even talking about? what the fuck does it matter if some pastors, rabbis or imams try to spin this as god's work or not?

don't be angry teenage atheist person , it's really annoying

also, on topic, this is pretty rad

Yes, I'm aware of that, but "curing" a disease at any point should still be acknowledged. Saying you're not impressed makes all of the hard work that these scientists have done just seem pointless.

On the downside, we are getting closer and closer to putting Adam Scott out of work.

Seriously though, this is awesome news.

and they should feel pointless, too! :P

I wonder. If they ever did completely cure all STD's if the world would go sex crazy and we all just start fucking like bunnies. I feel like there's enough solid birth control options out there that once STD's are taken off the table there's really nothing left to stop people from doing it but finding a willing partner.

not until abortion becomes a Thing that's not shunned or looked down upon

@crusader8463:

I bet some other disease would evolve into another form of a disease that we don't have a cure for and then it would be back to where we are now.

Eh... theirs nothing stopping most people from fucking like bunnies now... People dont really care, as show by the fact that there are still STDs spreading.

Alright I get your angle now. Take that science, neener neener neener!

Here's A More Detailed Article

Basically it looks like 29 days after the birth the child showed no signs of the virus in her blood. She then received regular check-ups for 18 months and then there was a 10 month gap where the mother stopped taking the child to the doctor. Being a mental health therapist I can say, at least for my clients, the hardest thing to do is to keep someone coming in when things are going well. I imagine that is what happened here but it is unclear what occurred during that 10 month period or why, officially, the mother stopped bringing her child.

After the 10 month break the mother brought her daughter back and, again, through several tests the virus was still virtually undetectable. The one significant hang up is here;

"There are no samples that can be used by other researchers to confirm the findings, which may lead skeptics to challenge how the doctors know for sure that the child was infected.

Persaud said the team is trying to use the tiny scraps of viral genetic material they have been able to gather from the child to compare with the mother's infection, to confirm that the child's infection came from her mother. But, she stressed, the baby had tested positive in two separate blood tests, and there had been evidence of the virus replicating in her blood, which are standard methods of confirming HIV infection."

So there are still questions to sort out. But it looks like the majority of people believe the child had the virus and now does not following treatment. Currently;

"The researchers are trying to find biomarkers that would offer a rationale to consider stopping therapy within the context of a clinical trial. If they can learn what caused the child to clear her virus, they hope to replicate that in other babies, and eventually learn to routinely cure infections."

This is great since a lot of kids get HIV aids transmitted through childbirth. Good to see some hope for this.

@authenticm said:

I was about to post something like this. SCIENCE!

Cool news. So this applies to fetuses only?

People who believe in god (little g on purpose) associate anything good in life with their religion, so there will as always be the religious people claiming this in a divine interaction etc etc. But it's still a huge ass whooping from science.

Also, fellow Nufc fan, yeyy

This happened with a newborn child. The reason the drugs were started so early was that the mother had not had any treatment for her HIV virus during the pregnancy. In fact it might be that this treatment wouldn't have been as successful had the mother been taking drugs for her diagnosis prior to birth. That's still something that needs to be researched.

We really need to stop with this entire sub-section of comments. It's so irrelevant to the topic itself and could be really disrespectful. I'm a Christian myself and would be more offended if I didn't have a thick skin and remembered this is the internet. But I'm bugged it's even being brought up because it has nothing to do with the actual topic itself. Just drop it.

I've started watching Battlestar Galactica for the first time and any mention of religion throws my mind in a spiral and I get all confused like I have dementia. I really need to take a break from that show to recoup my brain.

If only they could get this kind of treatment out to the third world countries that need it more then we do but can't afford it.

Hopefully they have these drugs out there. They are apparently pretty common and I imagine with all the support that is going out to heavily infected areas, like Africa, this treatment would be pretty straightforward to implement. I'm kind of worried that the prices of this drugs will increase because now their value has increased and that just seems like something a drug company would do (not that everything a drug company does is bad but doesn't that sound like a drug company thing to do?).

Six different laboratories using the most advanced equipment and techniques available to us at this time were unable to find any trace of the virus inside the child's body, this isn't quite the same thing as a cure for HIV. It is a very important step down the long, long road to that end, though. It's possible that the child was unique in some physiological way, which combined with the drug treatment was effective in preventing the virus from getting a firm hold. One, apparently, successful test run of this treatment is a very, very important marker in the chapter of our fight against this virus.

This video sums up that sentiment better than I could.

That is totally what they do, with the reason they give being that they spent a shit ton of money developing the drug and need money to develop other drugs for other stuff.

Yeah, in the second article I referenced they mentioned that they are trying to figure out what exactly lead to the virus leaving her body. I'm actually taking a refresher course in psychopharmacology and it's amazing what can effect how drugs work in our bodies. From metabolic rate, environment, genetics, and gene history all changes a drugs ability to work among many other factors. So there's still a chance that this kid was unique in some extraordinary way. But if they can pinpoint what specifically lead to the virus leaving her body with the treatment they could theoretically duplicate that scenario with other children.

Wow all the people in this thread treating religion vs. science as some kind of contest are borderline retarded. They are two separate and distinct entities that we can both appreciate. One is a process, the other is a lifestyle. It's incomparable.

This is a big deal, I hope they can replicate it successfully, cause this basically seems like we stumbled on to it. I'll get really excited when this happens to multiple kids.

Firstly they need the catholic church to fuck off with their "no contraception" preaching.

Medical science, fuck yeah. I'm going to read up on this, that's really fantastic news.

I can't even imagine, must be such a relief, couldn't be happier for them.

forgive the cynicism

but what also sounds like what the bad drug companies would do is censor this cure from the masses in favor of the "incremental cures" that they can milk people for $$$