Healed baby with HIV?

German AIDS experts doubt the healing of the HIV-infected child

03/06/2013

A baby infected with HIV is said to have been cured according to US medical doctors. This became known Monday when the case of the now two and a half-year-old girl from Mississippi was presented at the Atlanta Congress on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI). As the virologist Deborah Persaud reported, the early massive intervention of the doctors has meant that the disease in the child is unlikely to break out later. However, German experts have doubts about the functional healing of the girl.

Immune system can control residual HI viruses without drugs
As the US virologists around Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore reported, the child had been almost completely rid of the HIV virus. The amount of virus that is still detectable in the body of small patients, has now reduced so much that the body's immune system would cope with it without medical support. Doctors therefore speak of one „functional healing“. Most likely, the virus will not lead to the onset of AIDS in the girl. For a year now, the child has not received medication with no signs of HIV infection. Now, it is hoped to gain insight into the healing of HIV in children, said the doctors.

HI virus of the child after a month of therapy barely detectable
The doctors were told shortly before birth in 2010 of the HIV infection of the baby's mother. Until then, she had not received any medications to reduce the risk of her child becoming infected. The newborn was therefore treated promptly with a combination of three drugs, a so-called antiretroviral therapy. Astonishingly enough, as the doctors reported, the girl's viral load was barely detectable after just one month. Early treatment has very likely led to the virus not settling into any difficult-to-treat sleeping cells, said Deborah Persaud. These virus reservoirs are unavailable for medication and could cause a new outbreak if therapy were discontinued. However, the fact that the child did not show any signs of infection even after stopping the medication confirms this assumption.

The mother had interrupted the therapy of the girl after 18 months and visited the doctors again after ten months. In the child's blood test, four virus copies per microliter of blood were detected, reported Deborah Persaud. As the „FAZ“ says nothing is known about the current state of health of the child as the mother and child have disappeared.

German HIV experts doubt the healing of the HIV infected baby
In conversation with the „Germany wave“ The HIV experts Norbert Brockmeyer and Jürgen Rockstroh from the University Hospital Bonn were skeptical about the healing of the HIV-infected baby. The message from the United States was indeed with great interest, „but was received skeptically, "Norbert Brockmeyer reported that during the congress, the case of the girl had been discussed in detail, but in the process also doubts arose. „I wonder if the child was really infected or whether it was not more of a successful post-exposure prophylaxis, "said Brockmeyer.This treatment for prevention is started as soon as possible, within 24 hours, after the person concerned This may be the case, for example, when medical personnel injure themselves with an injection and unintentionally come into contact with infected blood, and the emergency treatment should prevent the virus from implanting in the body, which is why Brockmeyer does not believe that that in the case of the child, it was actually the cure of a fixed infection.

Also for Jürgen Rockstroh some questions remained open: „Has HIV replication already been triggered? Or is this - as in other cases where we give prophylaxis - been prevented? "There is no evidence that the HI virus has already nestled in the child's cells and propagated. Only if that was the case, could from „cure“ be spoken, so Brockmeyer. „Before any more data comes from the colleagues, the case for me is only a hint: We are on the way. "Whether the little girl was actually healed or has received a very effective prophylaxis can not be answered at this time However, the case shows how important it is to start treatment as early as possible, according to the expert.

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Why some people do not get AIDS despite HIV
AIDS: No fate with real antibodies?

Image: Gerd Altmann, Pixelio.de