7 April 2013
MEDICINE: A medical breakthrough may have resulted in the cure for HIV.
By Kate Weggeland, Staff Writer
The cure for the HIV virus may have been discovered. Two reports of “functional” HIV cures have been reported. With the early treatment of drugs, doctors believe they may have found the cure to the virus.
After being treated with anti-HIV drugs, a Mississippi baby showed how the virus can be cured with early detection and “functional” cures. Although the baby had only been diagnosed with the virus for 31 hours, the child is used as “proof of principle that we can cure HIV infection,” Dr. Deborah Persaud, a doctor at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, said.
Over two million people are infected by with the HIV virus every year. A total of 34 million people are currently diagnosed with HIV, yet no cure has been found. Although every case is different, the time in which a patient is treated is key. “Most patients with HIV do not start [treatment] until years after infection. Even when we diagnose HIV early—itself a difficult task—many HIV- positive patients do not begin treatment for years after infection. That is in part because of the great cost of HIV treatment,” Persaud said.
Due to the early detection and diagnosis of the baby in Mississippi, the doctors were able to be cure the child of his virus. “No HIV is detectable in the Mississippi baby after longer than two years,” Persaud reported. In cases in which the virus had been present for a longer period of time without detection, and the patients were treated for their virus, the patients had low levels of detectable HIV. Although the virus had not been cured, it was “under control” and not negatively affecting the patients.
Even though this treatment may be far from a total cure for the HIV virus, it is a step forward and a medical breakthrough.
Contributed By sandrarose.com