Another baby cured of HIV?

Aggressive, early therapy for a baby born with the HIV virus has once again given seemingly excellent results, and a team of doctors from Los Angeles hopes that the child has been successfully cured, reports "The Guardian".

The therapy began just four hours after the birth of the girl from suburban Los Angeles last April. Doctors continue to give her medication, and a series of tests show that her condition is significantly different from that of regular patients, for whom the medication mostly only suppresses the infection.

"We don't know if the baby is in remission, but everything indicates that she is. We are cautious and cannot say that she is completely cured, but we certainly hope so," said one of the specialists from the medical team.

As stated, the doctors knew that the mother was infected with HIV "from one previous pregnancy", and when she came for a new delivery, it was found that she was not taking any medication.

Last year's work by doctors from Mississippi was seen by many as a revolution and the biggest turning point in the fight against the spread of HIV, and a significant fact is the fact that cheap and available anti-HIV drugs are used for treatment.

Doctors decided on aggressive, early treatment thanks to a report on the treatment of a Mississippi child published just a month before the birth of the infected girl.

The baby from Mississippi is now three and a half years old, has been off treatment for more than two years and has tested negative for HIV.

Last year's work by doctors from Mississippi was seen by many as a revolution and the biggest turning point in the fight against the spread of HIV, and a significant fact is the fact that cheap and available anti-HIV drugs are used for treatment.

Before that, doctors announced in only one other case in history that someone had been cured of HIV. This is the case of the famous "Berlin patient" Timothy Ray Brown. His infection was suppressed in 2007 with heavy therapy used against leukemia, which almost completely destroyed his immune system.

Unlike the expensive therapy that was used in the case of the "Berlin patient", these two babies are treated with widely available drugs.

The usual procedure is to give at-risk newborns low doses of antiviral drugs until the HIV test results come in, by which time the baby is already six weeks old.