{"id":338756,"date":"2017-07-24T10:30:15","date_gmt":"2017-07-24T10:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=338756"},"modified":"2017-07-24T10:30:15","modified_gmt":"2017-07-24T10:30:15","slug":"south-african-child-virtually-cured-of-hiv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=338756","title":{"rendered":"South African child ‘virtually cured’ of HIV"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A nine-year-old infected with HIV at birth has spent most of their life without needing any treatment, say doctors in South Africa.<\/p>\n

The child, whose identity is being protected, was given a burst of treatment shortly after birth.<\/p>\n

They have since been off drugs for eight-and-a-half years without symptoms or signs of active virus.<\/p>\n

The family is said to be “really delighted”.<\/p>\n

Most people need treatment every day to prevent HIV destroying the immune system and causing Aids.<\/p>\n

Understanding how the child is protected could lead to new drugs or a vaccine for stopping HIV.<\/p>\n

The child caught the infection from their mother around the time of birth in 2007. They had very high levels of HIV in the blood.<\/p>\n

Early antiretroviral therapy was not standard practice at the time, but was given to the child from nine weeks old as part of a clinical trial.<\/p>\n

Levels of the virus became undetectable, treatment was stopped after 40 weeks and unlike anybody else on the study – the virus has not returned.<\/p>\n

Early therapy which attacks the virus before it has a chance to fully establish itself has been implicated in child “cure” cases twice before.<\/p>\n

The “Mississippi Baby” was put on treatment\u00a0within 30 hours of birth and went 27 months without treatment before HIV re-emerged in her blood.<\/p>\n

There was also a case in France with a patient who has now gone more than 11 years without drugs.<\/p>\n

Dr Avy Violari, the head of paediatric research at the Perinal HIV Research Unit in Johannesburg, said: “We don’t believe that antiretroviral therapy alone can lead to remission.<\/p>\n

“We don’t really know what’s the reason why this child has achieved remission – we believe it’s either genetic or immune system-related.”<\/p>\n

‘Virtual cure’<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some people are naturally better at dealing with an HIV infection – so-called “elite controllers”. However, whatever the child has is different to anything that has been seen before.<\/p>\n

Replicating it as a new form of therapy – a drug, antibody or vaccine – would have the potential to help other patients.<\/p>\n

It is worth noting that while there is no active HIV in the child’s body, the virus has been detected in the child’s immune cells.<\/p>\n

HIV can hide inside them – called latent HIV – for long periods of time, so there is still a danger the child could need drug treatment in the future.<\/p>\n

The team in Johannesburg performed the study alongside the UK’s MRC Clinical Trials Unit.<\/p>\n

‘One child’<\/strong><\/p>\n

Prof Diana Gibbs, who is based in London, told the BBC News website: “It captures the imagination because you’ve got a virtual cure and it is exciting to see cases like this.<\/p>\n

“But it is important to remember it is one child.<\/p>\n

“HIV is still a massive problem around the world and we mustn’t put all our eyes on to one phenomenon like this, as opposed to looking at the bigger issues for Africa.”<\/p>\n

Worldwide, 36.7 million people are living with HIV and only 53% of them are receiving antiretroviral therapy.<\/p>\n

Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said: “Further study is needed to learn how to induce long-term HIV remission in infected babies.<\/p>\n

“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 lifelong therapy and the health consequences of long-term immune activation typically associated with HIV disease.”<\/p>\n

The results are being presented at the\u00a0IAS Conference on HIV Science.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Source: BBC<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A nine-year-old infected with HIV at birth has spent most of their life without needing any treatment, say doctors in South Africa. The child, whose identity is being protected, was given a burst of treatment shortly after birth. They have since been off drugs for eight-and-a-half years without symptoms or signs of active virus. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[7002,1756],"class_list":["post-338756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","tag-aids","tag-hiv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=338756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=338756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=338756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=338756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}