Scientists published a new report in the New England Journal of Medicine on the case study following HIV treatment in an infant.  The child was born to a woman that was positive for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1).  Thirty hours after birth, doctors began administering antiretroviral therapy.  They continued the therapy after DNA and RNA tests satisfied the diagnostic criteria for infection.  Doctors ceased antiretroviral therapy when the infant reached 18 months of age.  At 30 months, the child is HIV-free.  Tests on the child’s plasma, peripheral blood mononuclear cells, and antibodies have not found HIV-1 to be present.

According to Health magazine, doctors also chose to employ a combination of three antiretroviral drugs, all given at doses commonly used to treat HIV-infected infants, and kept the girl on the medications until she was 18 months old. This prevented the virus from mounting any drug resistance before it could be wiped clean from her body.  The two factors — timing and medication — appear to have prevented HIV from gaining a foothold in the girl’s immune system. The virus was unable to create a reservoir in her body in which dormant HIV can hide and later reignite when drug therapy is suspended.

The 3-year-old Mississippi girl is apparently cured of HIV, but the article did not refer to the results of the treatment as a cure.  Scientists have found small indications of HIV in the girl’s blood.  However, it is unclear whether or not these traces are false positives or if they are remnants of the otherwise eradicated virus.  Also, because of the rare nature of this treatment, scientists are unclear whether or not those remnants could also turn into an active virus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that HIV stands for human immunodeficiency virus.  It is the virus that can lead to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS. Unlike some other viruses, the human body cannot get rid of HIV. That means that once a person is infected with HIV, they have it for life.  However, HIV does not guarantee that a person will end up with AIDS.

According to the Annual Review of Immunology, in the absence of antiretroviral treatment, HIV-1 establishes a chronic, progressive infection of the human immune system that invariably, over the course of years, leads to its destruction and fatal immunodeficiency.  The CDC states that, annually, there are approximately 50,000 new infections of HIV in the U.S. every year.  Annually, there are an estimated 15,500 deaths from AIDS and over 600,000 deaths recorded to date in the U.S.