On March 3, 2013, Scientists revealed at a scientific conference in Atlanta that a two and a half year old has been the first child cured of HIV and the second person ever to be cured from the pandemic. The child was a little girl who was born with the virus but now appears to be healthy and HIV free. The child was born as a high risk exposure to maternal HIV, and did not receive any prenatal care which means she didn't get any antiviral drugs during the pregnancy. The scientist, Hannah Gay, is a pediatric infectious disease specialist, that took immediate action in getting the child the proper drugs and care she needed. At 31 hours after birth, Gay gave the baby her first dose of antiviral drugs. The baby was given three powerful doses of therapeutic drugs instead of the normally prescribed prophylactic doses. Over the next few months, the child's blood showed no signs of the virus until her mother stopped bringing her for check ups for unknown reasons. After the mother and daughter were located it was about half a year later, and the daughter still showed no signs of the virus replicating, which is known as a functional cure.
This article is amazing news for the human race, because every year around the world there are about 300,000 cases of babies being diagnosed with maternal HIV. Mostly these cases are known to be found in sub-Saharan Africa, but occur all over the world. Now that there has been one case of a baby being cured, scientists will be able to cure or at least put cases of HIV into remission. Also now that scientists know that the doses of therapeutic drugs worked better than the prophylactic drugs there will be further research done to make the drugs more affective. From this article, if one case of HIV was cured in the near future more and more cases will be cured and hopefully soon enough the pandemic will be controlled!
HIV Virus
References:
1. Knox, Richard. "Scientists Report First Cure Of HIV In A Child, Say It's A Game-Changer." NPR. NPR, 04 Mar. 2013. Web. 08 Apr. 2013.
2. http://www.kurzweilai.net/images/hiv_virus.jpg
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