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2nd baby possibly `cured` of HIV by early treatment

Posted March. 07, 2014 04:22,   

한국어

Babies born infected with the AIDS virus can be possibly cured. Scientists are excited about the second case of a baby whose AIDS was put into remission, although they doubted the first successful treatment that cured an infected baby last year.

Doctors at Miller Children’s Hospital in Long Beach, California, revealed their case at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston on Wednesday. A baby born to a woman with AIDS was treated with anti-viral drugs four hours after the birth and is now free from the virus that causes AIDS.

The doctors started the baby on three drugs used for treatment of the AIDS virus in April last year. The virus began to disappear six days after birth and was undetectable within 11 months. According to the New York Times, Dr. Yvonne J. Bryson, a medical professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that “still being cautious to say the baby has been ‘cured,’ but it is surprising that the virus disappeared so fast.”

The doctors at the Children’s Hospital said they applied the same treatment used in the first case that cured the virus in March last year, after confirming that the baby was infected with AIDS. The medical team at Mississippi University released its case at the conference that the infant made an apparent recovery from H.I.V. infection in 30 months following the treatment with anti-viral drugs within 30 hours after birth. The team chose higher doses of medicine than usually used, which they hesitated to use due to side effects, and got an “unexpected result.” The baby who remains anonymous is called the “Mississippi baby.”

The research team who released the second cured case using a similar treatment said that "there might be five more such cases in Canada and three in South Africa.” The team added that it will conduct clinical trials in 50 babies who are born infected by administering drugs within 48 hours after the birth. Researchers said if that trial works, the protocol for treating babies born infected each year worldwide will no doubt be rewritten. The treatment was unthinkable several years ago, the New York Times said.