This is the best news yet of the
century and I can say has the potential to become the best news of the century
even if 88 years are still to go. A two-and-half year old baby has been cured
of HIV!
AIDS kills millions every year.
HIV infects millions new every year. The largest number of HIV/AIDS infected is
in the poorer countries and funding the HIV/AIDS treatment including the
R&D has become a big bone of contention and spans a body of discussion on the
political motivations and obstructions on funding to find the cure of the
humanity’s most deadly enemy yet.
As reported, a Mississippi baby, who was HIV infected from
birth, has been found HIV-infection free in fresh round of medical checkup. As
a CNN report said it happened quite easily. Her antiretroviral medication was
stopped when she was 15 months old. She was found infection free when she was
taken for diagnosis at her second birthday. Scientists believe it could have
been due to the high-dose of the combination of three antiretroviral medicines
given to the baby within 30 hours of birth.
It is only second claim of HIV
cure and first in case of a child. Further studies into the case would
certainly be beneficial to the countless babies born with the virus in the
poorer countries where the epidemic continues to be spreading its tentacles.
The baby’s case may be not be
groundbreaking immediately for millions of HIV/AIDS affected lives, as the
doctors say it is ‘grossly unique’, but such cases are the confidence boosters,
and the subsequent R&D would certainly open new doors to understand and
rapidly develop a possible cure for the virus.
This is the second case after the
‘Berlin Patient’ Timothy Ray Brown declared HIV-free and the next leap of faith
to work even more intensely to find the solution to subdue the killer that has
been taking lives for the past 30 years.
Timothy was diagnosed in 1995. In
2007, while undergoing chemotherapy for Leukemia, he was given a stem cell
transplant. The donor in this case was some someone who had inherited a rare gene
mutation resistant to the HIV virus. Since then, his HIV infection level has
been below the detection level.
There were high costs involved in
Timothy’s case but the baby’s cure has come with normal course of
antiretroviral medicines. There might be some unique medical conditions leading
to the cure in both the cases as it is being said. But what matters is the tag
‘it has been cured’ even if ‘functionally’, i.e., they are now off the
antiretroviral medicine regime.
Since Timothy’s case in 2007,
there have been other claims of cure and advances in the medical R&D and
the humanity now has the second validated claim just after 5 years.
It indeed can be a big stimulus
for the scientists and the governments to give the required push to find a
solution to the lethal weapon that is killing mankind, not just physiologically
but sociologically as well.
The ‘Berlin Patient’ is not a patient
anymore. The miracle Mississippi
baby is not HIV-infected anymore. They are ‘functionally cured’ of the HIV
infection.
Given the severity and the
medical complexities into the dimensions of the word ‘cured’ in these two
cases, it cannot be said when the journey would see the transition, from a
‘functional cure’ (as in these two cases) to the ‘cure’ leading to the complete
eradication of the virus, but these two cases say the journey is on its way.