Teen’s 12-Year HIV Remission Latest ‘Functional Cure’ Case

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. When she reappeared a year later, her mother told doctors that she had stopped giving the girl HIV drugs. Yet doctors could not find HIV in her blood so they decided not to resume treatment. Treatment failure may have occurred because participants either did not take their antiretroviral drugs as prescribed or had an HIV strain that resisted or acquired resistance to one or more of the drugs in their treatment regimen.

“With this first, highly documented case of this young woman, we provide the proof of concept that long-term remission is possible in children, as in adults”. Four of those eight infections were diagnosed not long after the HIV-positive partner started treatment, suggesting that the partner may not have had an undetectable viral load yet, or that the transmission occured just before he or she started treatment. Saez-Cirion said she does not possess the genetic factors similar to elite controllers. He continues to say that she was not, in fact able to suppress the virus on her own. EGPAF is committed to ensuring that children living with HIV are prioritized in order to shrink these gaps in pediatric treatment.

The reason behind her long-term remission could possibly be traced back to the treatment she had as a child.

“Early treatment as soon as you’re infected leads to a survival benefit”, she said. Through the leadership of South Africa and in partnership with CHAI, UNAIDS, UNITAID, The Global Fund and the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), suppliers were challenged to lower viral load prices, and Roche is the first company to step forward and offer the HIV community an access policy that will accomplish these goals.

The case proves the effectiveness of early treatment of HIV in both children and adults, said Dr Asier Saez-Cirion of the Institut Pasteur in Paris.

In 2011, the HPTN 052 study investigators reported a breakthrough: Starting HIV treatment early, when the immune system is relatively healthy, reduced the risk of sexually transmitting the virus to an uninfected partner by 96 percent over 18 months.

That was the case with the “Mississippi baby”, who was born to an HIV-positive mother who had not received any treatment during pregnancy.

In the early 90s, an HIV diagnosis did not come with a bright future.

More than 6,000 worldwide experts are attending the Vancouver conference, and Montaner said they all need to have the same message when it comes to pressuring governments to support HIV treatment.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) applauded the results of the Strategic Timing of Antiretroviral Treatment (START) trial, released today at the global AIDS Society Conference (IAS) in Vancouver, showing that immediate treatment is beneficial for the individual regardless of the status of their immune system. One of the patients has had the virus under control for more than 13 years.

“The reality is there are still two million new infections and 1.5 million deaths a year from HIV and 35 million living with HIV”.

“The real question here in the teenager is whether this is truly novel or whether this teenager would have controlled her virus anyway, the way others have in the past”, Deeks said. Three years later, the group stopped taking their prescriptions.

Professor Lewin said it also reinforced the benefits of getting treatment as soon as possible (ideally within 60 days of infection) because it tended to deliver better outcomes for people.

“This collaboration illustrates how we are sharing responsibility and working together to end the HIV/AIDS pandemic”, said Ambassador Deborah L. Birx, M.D., USA Global AIDS Coordinator and USA Representative for Global Health Diplomacy.

Dr. Steven Deeks, an AIDS specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, agreed, but said the case “adds to the growing story that we should be treating everybody really early”.