In a first, baby with HIV is cured

Doctors announced on Sunday a baby had been cured of an HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) infection for the first time, a startling development that could change how infected newborns are treated and sharply reduce the number of children living with the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).

The baby, born in rural Mississippi in the US, was treated aggressively with antiretroviral drugs starting around 30 hours after birth, something that is not usually done. If further study shows this works in other babies, it will almost certainly be recommended globally. The United Nations estimates 330,000 babies were infected in 2011, the most recent year for which there is data, and that more than three million children globally are living with HIV.

If the report is confirmed, the child born in Mississippi would be only the second well-documented case of a cure in the world. That could give a lift to research aimed at a cure, something that only a few years ago was thought to be virtually impossible, though some experts said the findings in the baby would probably not be relevant to adults.

The first person cured was Timothy Brown, known as the Berlin patient, a middle-aged man with leukemia who received a bone-marrow transplant from a donor genetically resistant to HIV infection.

"For pediatrics, this is our Timothy Brown," said Deborah Persaud, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center and lead author of the report on the baby. "It's proof of principle that we can cure HIV infection if we can replicate this case." Persaud and other researchers spoke in advance of a presentation of the findings on Monday at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta. The results have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

Some outside experts, who have not yet heard all the details, said they needed convincing that the baby had truly been infected. If not, this would be a case of prevention, something already done for babies born to infected mothers.

"The one uncertainty is really definitive evidence that the child was indeed infected," said Daniel R Kuritzkes, chief of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

© 2013 The New York Times News Service