Summary It’s the first reported case of a child controlling their HIV infection without drugs. Courtesy: CNN
(Web Desk) - A 9-year-old has become the world’s third child born with HIV to go into remission without regular treatment.
The child’s immune system has been healthy ever since receiving a short course of treatment in early age making him the first reported case of a child controlling their HIV infection without drugs in Africa, CNN reported.
Scientists believe that aggressive treatment after diagnoses of infection in early life could lead to long-term remission of the disease. Individual infected with HIV must take daily antiretroviral drugs (ART) for their whole lives to control the infection’s progression. The child was placed on ART for 40 weeks soon after he was diagnosed with HIV, but that was the only treatment he received.
His health was closely monitored as part of the study for the clinical trial investigating the potential for early ART to decrease infant mortality and reduce the need for lifelong treatment among newborns infected with HIV.
Scientists were surprised to find that the child’s blood tests revealed that he had no need for medication confirming that remission began right after he received the treatment and that the virus remained in a small number of immune system cells, but none capable of reproducing.
Electron micrograph showing HIV particles shown inside a human cell. Courtesy: Graphic News
Experts have stressed the case is extremely rare, and does not suggest a simple path to a future cure for Aids, which killed an estimated 1.1 million people worldwide in 2015.
The child, who was not identified, was part of a study known as the Children with HIV Early Antiretroviral Therapy, or CHER, trial, which ran from 2005 to 2011. More than 370 infants infected with HIV were randomly assigned to immediately receive ART for either 40 weeks or 96 weeks. The life-long treatment comes with side-effects but a study under way now is testing whether treating HIV-infected newborns within two days of birth can control the virus later after treatment stops.
Two similar cases have been reported of long-term HIV remission in a child after early, limited treatment with antiretroviral drugs.
A baby born with the virus in Mississippi in 2010 for 27 months after stopping treatment before it rebounded. She was able to control the virus again after treatment resumed. A French woman who was born with HIV and is now around 20 has had her infection under control despite no HIV medication since she was around six years old.
The doctors intend to study this case in hopes to develop a treatment that could be applied in combination with ART to avoid the side effects of this treatment.
People could even end receiving the drugs not because they are cured, but because virus levels are low enough, or undetectable, to help them stay healthy without the need for drugs.
