In the US state of Mississippi, a unique case of complete recovery of a child born with the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes the disease, HIV, the last stage of which is known as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), has been recorded.
According to the newspaper, we are talking about a girl at the age of 2.5 years who managed to recover thanks to "aggressive drug treatment immediately after her birth."
We are talking about highly active antiretroviral therapy, consisting of the simultaneous administration of three to four potent drugs. According to the recommendation of the World Health Organization (WHO), it is not used from the first days of a patient's life, since it is not always possible to immediately make the correct diagnosis for HIV, ITAR-TASS notes.
The probability of an accurate diagnosis, according to the WHO, ranges from 15% to 45%. As a rule, such therapy begins to be used only after all the necessary tests, after four to six weeks.
“This extraordinary event could change the entire care system for hundreds of thousands of children born with HIV infection. If further research confirms the effectiveness of such a treatment regimen, then it could become widespread, the Wall Street Journal notes.
The first case of a cure for HIV infection, the newspaper recalled, was recorded in 2007 in Berlin, when a man infected with the virus was cured thanks to bone marrow transplantation.
According to the newspaper, the doctors became aware of the girl's cure after the examination showed that there were no traces of HIV infection in the child's body.
“It's just incredible. The child underwent aggressive therapy, and then stopped it and recovered completely. Patients typically die within a few weeks after treatment is discontinued,”said case study lead Deborah Persot of the Johns Hopkins Center in Baltimore, Maryland.
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At the same time, she added that it is too early to talk about a new method of treating AIDS, since this is still an isolated case.