

Tests suggest baby born with HIV may be cured - shire
http://news.yahoo.com/tests-suggest-baby-born-hiv-110639419.html

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nwh
> _Doctors won 't call it a cure because they don't know what proof or how
> much time is needed to declare someone free of HIV infection, long feared to
> be permanent._

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Mithrandir
Original report in the New England Journal of Medicine:
[http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1302976](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1302976)

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jared314
Summary: The child was born with HIV, from a mother with "relatively low viral
load", and started on antiretroviral therapy 30 hours later, and continued for
20 months. (While not being breast feed, to avoid reinfection.) Resulting in
controlled levels of HIV-1 viremia 18 months after treatment stopped. That
sounds like early treatment being more successful, not a cure.

I also don't see a discussion about the potential long-term health issues
caused by the treatment, although they do acknowledge the FDA has warnings
against using some combinations of ART drugs for infants less than 14 days of
age.

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tieTYT
IANAD, but AFAIK, HIV tests check for antibodies: Your body's response to HIV.
So how do they check that the virus is gone? AFAIK, the antibodies would
remain in your system even if you killed the virus. I guess if the child
didn't produce her own antibodies, then they'd be flushed out of her system
eventually.

Are they looking at a lack of anti bodies to determine a lack of virus? Or, do
they have a special test where they actually look for the virus? If the
latter, why don't they use this test to determine if someone has HIV for
everybody? I recall reading it takes up to 6 months for the antibodies to show
up in your blood stream. If you could just look for the virus itself, wouldn't
you know sooner?

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frisco
You can use PCR to check for the presence of viral DNA or RNA (the "viral
load"). It's a direct test for the virus and is relatively cheap.

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Touche
The article suggests that no, there isn't a cure.

