Teen is HIV-free without using meds

Whatever the cause, the record remission has revived hope for a “functional” HIV cure, where the virus stays at a low level without continuing treatment. The study, which began in 2005, originally recruited 1,763 heterosexual couples from ten different countries, including the United States, Thailand and South Africa.

All participants received condoms and counselling on how to protect their partners from sexual transmission of HIV.

“This is the first [time] long-term remission has been shown in children, or adolescents”, said Asier Saez Cirion from the Institut Pasteur in France, who reported the findings at the 8th IAS conference on HIV pathogenesis, treatment and prevention, in Vancouver this week.

A new analysis of the major trial that provided gold-standard scientific proof supporting early treatment of HIV has illustrated in greater depth the many benefits of starting antiretrovirals (ARVs) soon after diagnosis and when CD4 counts are high. “The study now makes crystal clear that when an HIV-infected person takes antiretroviral therapy that keeps the virus suppressed, the treatment is highly effective at preventing sexual transmission of HIV to an uninfected heterosexual partner”, NIAID Director Anthony Fauci said.

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% of HIV patients whose immune systems fight off the AIDS virus on their own, said Warner Greene, director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology at University of California, San Francisco.

Most HIV-infected moms in the US get AIDS medicines during pregnancy, which greatly cuts the chances they will pass the virus to their babies. “These findings illustrate that treatment is an incredibly powerful tool for HIV prevention”.

The lack of sexual transmission of HIV by virally suppressed individuals in this large study provides robust evidence that antiretroviral therapy started at any time in the course of infection can prevent heterosexual HIV transmission if viral suppression is achieved and maintained, the investigators note. Cohen, UNC’s chief of the Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases, has headed the global research project for a decade and studied more than 1,700 couples. When they returned her to medical care one year later, she was found to have an “undetectable viral load”, said the report. When that failed and she tested positive for HIV, doctors started her on a four-drug regimen of anti-AIDS drugs. This, they say, suggests that early treatment is responsible for the remission.