CHICAGO (Reuters) - A baby girl in Mississippi who was born with
HIV has been cured after very early treatment with standard HIV
drugs, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday, in a potentially
ground-breaking case that could offer insights on how to
eradicate HIV infection in its youngest victims. The child's
story is the first account of an infant achieving a so-called
functional cure, a rare event in which a person achieves
remission without the need for drugs and standard blood tests
show no signs that the virus is making copies of itself. More
testing needs to be done to see if the treatment would have the
same effect on other children, but the results could change the
way high-risk babies are treated and possibly lead to a cure for
children with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. "This is a proof
of concept that HIV can be potentially curable in infants," said
Dr. Deborah Persaud, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore, who presented the findings at the Conference on
Retroviruses and Opportunis