ikenbot:

nprglobalhealth:

Scientists Report First Cure of HIV In A Child, Say It’s A Game-Changer

Scientists believe a little girl born with HIV has been cured of the infection.

She’s the first child and only the second person in the world known to have been cured since the virus touched off a global pandemic nearly 32 years ago.

Doctors aren’t releasing the child’s name, but we know she was born in Mississippi and is now 2 ½ years old – and healthy. Scientists presented details of the case on Sunday at a scientific conference in Atlanta.

The case has big implications. While fewer than 130 such children are born each year in the U.S., an estimated 330,000 children around the world get infected with HIV at or around birth every year, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.

Until now, such children have been considered permanently infected. Specialists thought they needed lifelong antiviral drugs to prevent HIV from destroying their immune system and killing them of AIDS.

The Mississippi child’s surprising cure came about from happenstance – and the quick thinking of a University of Mississippi pediatric infectious disease specialist named Hannah Gay.

Read more.

Microscopy image of HIV infecting an immune cell from the NIAID Flickr stream.

This is amazing, I hope that A.) the science community doesn’t downplay studies or observations such as this one and B.) that these observations are implemented and used wisely.