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    False Hope From Cure' of Mississippi Baby With HIV Leads To Resurgence of Virus in Second Child

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    Matin Ahmad Khan
    Researchers stopped HIV treatment for a boy in Italy after the apparent cure of the Mississippi baby, but the virus rebounded in the Italian boy as well. The boy's viral load increased dramatically just two weeks after stopping treatment. This case shows that current testing methods may not be able to detect hidden HIV reservoirs, and more research is needed to achieve a confirmed cure.

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    False Hope From Cure' of Mississippi Baby With HIV Leads To Resurgence of Virus in Second Child

    Uploaded by

    Matin Ahmad Khan
    59 views2 pages
    Researchers stopped HIV treatment for a boy in Italy after the apparent cure of the Mississippi baby, but the virus rebounded in the Italian boy as well. The boy's viral load increased dramatically just two weeks after stopping treatment. This case shows that current testing methods may not be able to detect hidden HIV reservoirs, and more research is needed to achieve a confirmed cure.

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    False Hope

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    Researchers stopped HIV treatment for a boy in Italy after the apparent cure of the Mississippi baby, but the virus rebounded in the Italian boy as well. The boy's viral load increased dramatically just two weeks after stopping treatment. This case shows that current testing methods may not be able to detect hidden HIV reservoirs, and more research is needed to achieve a confirmed cure.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    59 views2 pages

    False Hope From Cure' of Mississippi Baby With HIV Leads To Resurgence of Virus in Second Child

    Uploaded by

    Matin Ahmad Khan
    Researchers stopped HIV treatment for a boy in Italy after the apparent cure of the Mississippi baby, but the virus rebounded in the Italian boy as well. The boy's viral load increased dramatically just two weeks after stopping treatment. This case shows that current testing methods may not be able to detect hidden HIV reservoirs, and more research is needed to achieve a confirmed cure.

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    False hope from cure of Mississippi baby with HIV leads to

    resurgence of virus in second child


    Disappointed researchers reported on Thursday that a second child thought to have been
    cured of HIV is showing signs of infection.
    The patient, a boy born born at a hospital in Milan in December 2009, had only stopped
    treatment for two weeks when his viral load surged from being undetectable to 36,840
    copies per mL.
    The news was especially devastating because -- unlike the child in Mississippi who missed
    treatments because her mother did not bring her back to for followup visits -- doctors in
    this case stopped the anti-retrovirals on purpose.
    The boy, who began receiving aggressive therapy within 12 hours of his birth, was being
    closely monitored and continued to test negative for HIV on even the most sensitive tests
    since he began treatment. Writing in this week's edition of the journal Lancet, his doctors
    said that at the time the child was around 3 years old, they determined that treatment
    might no longer be necessary, given the results and in view of "recent reports of apparent
    cure of HIV infection."
    The Mississippi baby made headlines last fall when a study about her apparent cure was
    published in The New England Journal of Medicine. In a phone interview, Mario Clerici, a
    professor at the University of Milan and a co-author of the study, said the mother of the
    boy in the Lancet study read stories on the Internet about the Mississippi case and asked
    clinicians to stop her own child's therapy. HIV treatments can have a number of serious,
    long-term side effects, including damage to bones, liver and heart and she felt that if they
    could avoid subjecting her child to those risks they should, Clerici said.
    "We had a long discussion and we also spoke with all our colleagues around the world, and
    we all said it looks like the Mississippi baby is cured, so let's do it. Unfortunately, it was
    not the reality," Clerici said.

    One week after stopping treatment, the child still appeared to be cured, but two weeks
    later the child's viral load rebounded and the team restarted anti-retrovirals. By the third
    week, the boy's his viral load appeared to be under control and fell to low levels, but other
    tests for HIV turned positive. Clerici said the child's viral load has since returned to
    undetectable levels and that researchers are watching to see if the child will be able to clear
    all signs of the virus again with continued treatment.
    In July, U.S. government researchers announced what Clerici and his colleagues already
    feared -- that the Mississippi baby had also not been cured. In a routine clinical visit,
    researchers found that girl, who was nearly 4 years old at the time and had been off of
    treatment for more than two years, had detectable levels of the virus.
    A third baby who was thought to be cured and who was born near Los Angeles has not
    stopped treatment and remains free of the virus. Scientists now believe that reservoirs of
    HIV may be hiding in the body even when the virus appears to be gone, but can't be
    detected by current testing methods.

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