At a medical meeting in Atlanta today doctors said that they have cured an infant born with HIV by giving her an aggressive regimen of drugs shortly after birth, Bloomberg reports.
The baby, whose name has been witheld, began taking AIDS drugs about 30 hours after she was born at a rural hospital in Mississippi.
After 18 months, the mother took the child off the medication. The baby has shown no signs of the virus for 10 months and has been deemed “functionally cured.â€
Receiving the aggressive regimen of drugs right after birth may have stopped the virus from “forming hidden reservoirs.” If this finding is confirmed a similar approach could help cure thousands of infants.
Read more at Bloomberg.