This image shows Dr. Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins’ Children’s Center in Baltimore. A baby born with HIV appears to have been cured, scientists announced Sunday, Mar. 3. AP Photo/Johns Hopkins Medicine.

By Lauran Neergaard,
Associated Press

A baby born with the virus that causes AIDS appears to have been cured, scientists announced Sunday, describing the case of a child from Mississippi who is now 2 1/2 and has been off medication for about a year with no signs of infection.
There is no guarantee the child will remain healthy, although sophisticated testing uncovered slight traces of the virus’ genetic material still lingering. If so, it would mark only the world’s second reported cure.
Specialists say Sunday’s announcement, at a major AIDS meeting in Atlanta, offers promising clues for efforts to eliminate HIV infection in children, especially in AIDS-plagued African countries where too many babies are born with the virus.
“You could call this about as close to a cure, if not a cure, that we’ve seen,” Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health, who is familiar with the findings.
A doctor gave this baby faster and stronger treatment than is usual, starting a three-drug infusion within 30 hours of birth. That was before tests confirmed the infant was infected and not just at risk from a mother whose HIV wasn’t diagnosed until she was in labor.
“I just felt like this baby was at higher-than-normal risk and deserved our best shot,” said Dr. Hannah Gay, a pediatric HIV specialist at the University of Mississippi.
That fast action apparently knocked out HIV in the baby’s blood before it could form hideouts in the body. Those so-called reservoirs of dormant cells usually rapidly reinfect anyone who stops medication, said Dr. Deborah Persaud of Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. She led the investigation that deemed the child “functionally cured,” meaning long-term remission even if all traces of the virus haven’t been completely eradicated.
Persaud’s team is planning a study to try to prove that, with more aggressive treatment of other high-risk babies. “Maybe we’ll be able to block this reservoir seeding,” Persaud said.
No one should stop anti-AIDS drugs as a result of this case, Fauci cautioned.
But “it opens up a lot of doors” to research if other children can be helped, he said. “It makes perfect sense what happened.”
Better than treatment is to prevent babies from being born with HIV in the first place.
About 300,000 children were born with HIV in 2011, mostly in poor countries where only about 60 percent of infected pregnant women get treatment that can keep them from passing the virus to their babies.
In the U.S., such births are very rare because HIV testing and treatment long have been part of prenatal care.
“We can’t promise to cure babies who are infected. We can promise to prevent the vast majority of transmissions if the moms are tested during every pregnancy,” Gay stressed.
The only other person considered cured of the AIDS virus underwent a very different and risky kind of treatment – a bone marrow transplant from a special donor, one of the rare people who is naturally resistant to HIV.
The Mississippi case shows “there may be different cures for different populations of HIV-infected people,” said Dr. Rowena Johnston of amFAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research.
In the Mississippi case, the mother had had no prenatal care when she came to a rural emergency room in advanced labor. A rapid test detected HIV.
In such cases, doctors typically give the newborn low-dose medication in hopes of preventing HIV from taking root. But the small hospital didn’t have the proper liquid kind, and sent the infant to Gay’s medical center. She gave the baby higher treatment-level doses.
Ten months after treatment stopped, a battery of super-sensitive tests at half a dozen laboratories found no sign of the virus’ return. There were only some remnants of genetic material that don’t appear able to replicate, Persaud said.
In Mississippi, Gay gives the child a check-up every few months: “I just check for the virus and keep praying that it stays gone.”

Terralyn and her older brother Quincey Mosby, who often uses his poetry to express himself.

Paulette Hogan

By Jesse
Brooks

National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day is a time to share knowledge and shed light on the often-overlooked impact of the disease on women and families in our communities.
The official commemoration was March 10, but events happen all month.
Often buried within the data on the general AIDS population or lumped together with Black men, the statistics on Black women are startling. Perceptions of “I’m not at risk” continue to fuel HIV transmissions.
In 2010, women and girls made up two-thirds of those who were infected with the disease by having heterosexual sex.
African American women and girls continue to be disproportionately affected. Their rate was 20 times higher than that of white women. When HIV was first acknowledged, infections and AIDS were diagnosed for relatively few women and female adolescents.
But worldwide today, women are more likely to become infected with HIV than men, conflicting with long-held perceptions that HIV/AIDS is a man’s disease.
Oakland’s observance of the day featured Terralyn Mosby, 24, who spoke on the steps of City Hall She is the daughter of Roosevelt Mosby, a well known community activist, and Paulette Hogan, a HIV positive AIDS activist, who took her own life three years ago.
At the age of 12, Mosby and her older brother learned that their mother had contracted HIV.
The children took the news hard but soon became educated and informed.
Mosby says her mother was her hero, inspiring the young woman to overcome all the challenges she faced, like depression that was enhanced by a feeling of rejection. She eventually became a HIV/AIDS spokeswoman and advocate.
In her talks, Mosby tells of how it took her several years to finally accept her mother’s death was actually a suicide, as well as the pressure she receives not to talk about the tragedies in her life.
“So many people want me to keep it a secret,” she said. “In the spirit of my mother, I won’t. I know our story can be a help to someone else.”
When she learned her mother had killed herself, Mosby recalls that she screamed and cried for nights, asking, “How could she leave me, how could she do this?”
“I became angry and ran away from the church and everything that reminded me of her,” Mosby said.  “I blamed so many people and organizations for how they treated her some time. I felt that her heart loved so many and so much, but people still treated her badly, judging her on her past mental breakdown”.
With the support of her father and her brother Quincy, now 26, she says she is ready to take over where her mother left off. “I know I come from greatness,” she said.
For more information contact at mrjessebrooksii@gmail.com or  (510) 575-8245.

Dr. Muntu Davis, Director of Public Health for Alameda County Public Health Department, will lead a free training on case management and the AIDS State of Emergency, 9 a.m. to noon, Friday, Feb. 15, at Cal-Pep, 2811 Adeline St. in Oakland.
The goal of the training series is to engage community members to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic in increased risk communities of Alameda County. Dr. Davis will help attendees identify realistic measures to gauge how well agencies are delivering services.
For more information or to register call (510) 575-8245 or Cal Pep: (510) 874-7850.