The girl was born to an HIV-infected mother.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: AIDS researchers are reporting an “unprecedented” remission in a French teenager who was infected with HIV at birth but who has been off medication for 12 years.
The girl, who is now 18, was born to an HIV-infected mother, according to a study presented at a meeting of the International AIDS Society in Vancouver. After testing positive for HIV, the young girl was put on a regiment of four different anti-AIDS drugs, which she remained on until age 6, according to the study.
Doctors lost contact with the girl after that, and when she reappeared a year later her mother told doctors she had taken her daughter off the drugs. Astoundingly, when doctors retested the girl HIV levels in her blood were below levels detectable with standard tests.
Asier Sáez-Cirión, an assistant professor at the Pasteur Institute in Paris who conducted the research, was quick to note that the unidentified teen is not cured of HIV infection and that experts are not sure what caused her lengthy remission. “This girl is in remission,†Sáez-Cirión told the Washington Post. “She’s not cured.â€
Nevertheless, the case provides a number of possibilities for researchers seeking additional avenues in the battle against HIV, said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.
While it’s possible that the girl’s remission is the result of early treatment, it’s also possible that the girl is among the 1 percent of HIV patients whose immune systems fight off the AIDS virus on their own, Warner Greene, director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology at University of California, San Francisco, told USA Today.
These “elite responders,” while still infected with HIV, are “functionally” cured, since their HIV levels are almost undetected without medication, said Greene, who wasn’t involved with the new study.
Normally, HIV levels rebound within six to eight weeks of stopping medication, Greene said.