Researchers Describe First 'Functional HIV Cure' in an Infant

This article is about a team of researchers that has cured a baby born with HIV of the disease. The baby's mother was HIV positive, and received no pre-natal care, so the baby was born with HIV. immediately after birth, the baby received intense antiretroviral therapy to treat the disease, and 30 days later, the baby was no longer HIV positive. The researchers say that this happened because the disease was treated before it could form hard-to-treat viral pockets that cause the disease to return after stopping treatment. These findings may change the standard treatment for babies born to HIV infected mothers, who currently get a lower dose of the treatment to lessen the effect of HIV, but there is still a lot of tests to be done, to see if these results are able to be replicated in other newborns. The scientists say that despite these new findings, they want to focus on preventing mother-to-child transmission through treatment during pregnancy, but this exciting new discovery is an important step to eradicating HIV.

NOS themes:

Science is collaborative- Many scientists and researchers worked together to obtain and explain these results.
Importance of repeatability- More trials must be conducted to insure that these results are repeatable, and not just a one-time occurrence.
Science is subject to debate and tentative- As this is the first time that a baby has been cured of HIV, the findings are very tentative until more trials are conducted.

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