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Us Scientists: Hiv 'cured' In Baby


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ATLANTA, Georgia - Researchers said Sunday they had, for the first time, cured a baby born with HIV - a development that could help improve treatment of babies infected at birth.

 

There is an important technical nuance: researchers insist on calling it a "functional cure" rather than a complete cure.

 

That is because the virus is not totally eradicated. Still, its presence is reduced to such a low level that a body can control it without the need for standard drug treatment.

 

The only fully cured Aids patient recognized worldwide is the so-called "Berlin patient," American Timothy Brown. He is considered cured of HIV and leukaemia five years after receiving bone marrow transplants from a rare donor naturally resistant to HIV. The marrow transplant was aimed at treating his leukemia.

 

But in this new case, the baby girl received nothing more invasive or complex than commonly available antiretroviral drugs. The difference, however, was the dosage and the timing: starting less than 30 hours after her birth.

 

It is that kind of aggressive treatment that likely yielded the "functional cure," researchers reported at the 20th annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Atlanta, Georgia.

 

What researchers call dormant HIV-infected cells often re-start infections in HIV-infected patients within a few weeks after antiretroviral treatment stops, forcing most people who have tested HIV-positive to stay on the drugs for life or risk the illness progressing.

 

"Prompt antiviral therapy in newborns that begins within days of exposure may help infants clear the virus and achieve long-term remission without lifelong treatment by preventing such viral hideouts from forming in the first place," said lead researcher Deborah Persaud, of Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore, Maryland.

 

It appears to be the first time this was achieved in a baby, she said.

 

The baby was infected by her HIV-positive mother, and her treatment with therapeutic doses of antiretroviral drugs began even before her own positive blood test came back.

 

The typical protocol for high-risk newborns is to give them smaller doses of the drugs until results from an HIV blood test is available at six weeks old.

 

Tests showed the baby's viral count steadily declined until it could not longer be detected 29 days after her birth.

 

The child was given follow-up treatment with antiretrovirals until 18 months, at which point doctors lost contact with her for 10 months. During that period she was not taking antiretrovirals.

 

Researchers then were able to do a series of blood tests -- and none gave an HIV-positive result.

 

Natural viral suppression without treatment is an exceedingly rare occurrence, seen in fewer than half a percent of HIV-infected adults, known as "elite controllers," whose immune systems are able to rein in viral replication and keep the virus at clinically undetectable levels.

 

Experts on HIV have long wanted to help all HIV patients achieve elite-controller status. Researchers say this new case offers hope as a game-changer, because it suggests prompt antiretroviral therapy in newborns indeed can do that.

 

Still, they said, their first priority is learning how to stop transmission of the virus from mother to newborn. ARV treatments of mothers currently stop transmission to newborns in 98 percent of cases, they say.

 

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Foundation for AIDS Research.

 

 

http://www.bangkokpost.com/breakingnews/338698/hiv-cured-in-baby-for-the-first-time-scientists

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This has been under heavy surveillance in the research community. Funny was when the kid vanished. Mother, who is exactly like you would think, just disappeared and it took the police to find her.

 

As for the science, the working theory is: the babes inherited defense system which is working with it's mothers immunities for a few months, add the fact that the babies system is brand new and not been working for a couple of decades, then insert the state of the art anti-viral.. and that killed HIV.

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Study: Bee Venom Kills HIV

 

Discovery could lead to topical gel to prevent HIV transmission

 

 

Bees could hold the key to preventing HIV transmission. Researchers have discovered that bee venom kills the virus while leaving body cells unharmed, which could lead to an anti-HIV vaginal gel and other treatments.

 

Scientists at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that melittin, a toxin found in bee venom, physically destroys the HIV virus, a breakthrough that could potentially lead to drugs that are immune to HIV resistance. The study was published Thursday in the journal Antiviral Therapy.

 

"Our hope is that in places where HIV is running rampant, people could use this as a preventative measure to stop the initial infection," Joshua Hood, one of the authors of the study, said in a statement.

 

The researchers attached melittin to nanoparticles that are physically smaller than HIV, which is smaller than body cells. The toxin rips holes in the virus' outer layer, destroying it, but the particles aren't large enough to damage body cells.

 

"Based on this finding, we propose that melittin-loaded nanoparticles are well-suited for use as topical vaginal HIV virucidal agents," they write.

 

Theoretically, the particles could also be injected into an HIV-positive person to eliminate the virus in the bloodstream.

 

Because the toxin attacks the virus' outer layer, the virus is likely unable to develop a resistance to the substance, which could make it more effective than other HIV drugs.

 

"Theoretically, melittin nanoparticles are not susceptible to HIV mutational resistance seen with standard HIV therapies," they write. "By disintegrating the [virus'] lipid envelope [it's] less likely to develop resistance to the melittin nanoparticles."

 

The group plans to soon test the gel in clinical trials.

 

 

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/03/08/study-bee-venom-kills-hiv

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  • 2 weeks later...

If it works what would all the poor drug companies do with their HIV meds?

 

They will make other meds. Plenty of money to make in trying to save people from their own fat. (Anyone that believes in a massive conspiracy to develop --or not develop-- medicine just has no clue how research works.)

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