Sun.Star Pampanga

Girl's HIV infection seems under control without Aids drugs

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SOUTH African girl born with the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (Aids) virus has kept her infection suppressed for more than eight years after stopping anti-HIV (human immunodefi­ciency virus) medicines -- more evidence that early treatment can occasional­ly cause a long remission that, if it lasts, would be a form of cure.

Her case was revealed Monday at an Aids conference in Paris, where researcher­s also gave encouragin­g results from tests of shots every month or two instead of daily pills to treat HIV.

"That's very promising" to help people stay on treatment, the US's top Aids scientist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said of the prospects for long-acting drugs.

Current treatments keep HIV under control but must be taken lifelong. Only one person is thought to be cured -- the so-called Berlin patient, a man who had a bone marrow transplant in 2007 from a donor with natural resistance to HIV.

But transplant­s are risky and impractica­l to try to cure the millions already infected. So some researcher­s have been aiming for the next best thing -- long-term remission, when the immune system can control HIV without drugs even if signs of the virus remain.

Aggressive treatment soon after infection might enable that in some cases, and the South African girl is the third child who achieved a long remission after that approach.

She was in a study sponsored by the agency Fauci heads, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, that previously found that early versus delayed treatment helped babies survive.

The girl, who researcher­s did not identify, started on HIV drugs when she was 2 months old and stopped 40 weeks later. Tests when she was 9 1/2 years old found signs of virus in a small number of immune system cells, but none capable of reproducin­g. The girl does not have a gene mutation that gives natural resistance to HIV infection, Fauci said, so her remission seems likely due to the early treatment.

At least a dozen adults also have had remissions lasting for years after stopping HIV medicines.

( AP)

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