A French teenager who was infected with HIV either in utero or at birth in 1996 has been in remission since her treatment was stopped 12 years ago.
The young woman's body appears to be able to control the level of infection without antiretroviral treatment. Although she is not cured, her case suggests that there may be a "functional cure" for HIV, in which the level of infection can be brought down, Fox 8 reports.
"We don't know yet why this girl was able to control the infection," lead researcher Asier Saez-Cirion from the Institut Pasteur said. "We can detect HIV in the cells, but what we cannot detect is viral replication in the plasma," he added, according to ABC News.
"This is the first [time] long-term remission has been shown in children, or adolescents," Saez-Cirion said, Fox 8 reports.
The research findings were presented at the 8th International AIDS Society Conference on HIV pathogenesis, treatment and prevention held in Vancouver. It was the first reported case of long-term remission for an HIV-infected child who dropped out of treatment.
Although there are people, called "elite controllers," whose immune systems are able to ward off the virus, it is not the case for the young French woman. Saez-Cirion said she does not possess the genetic factors similar to elite controllers.
"Most likely she has been in virological remission for so long because she received a combination of antiretrovirals very soon after infection," he said, according to The Guardian.
The young French woman was given antiretroviral drugs as a prophylactic when she was young. She was treated with four antiretroviral drugs when the virus persisted. Her condition was monitored along with other child HIV patients.
When she was between five and six years of age, her family decided to stop her treatment. They brought her back a year later, and doctors were surprised to find undetectable levels of HIV in her blood. Her condition has remained the same for 12 years now.
"She is doing perfectly well. She has a healthy life with no complications," Saez-Cirion said. "Very clearly this girl is not cured. We're talking about remission," he added.
Experts said that the French girl's case suggests early initiation of antiretroviral treatment may aid remission by stopping the formation of HIV reservoirs in the body, but they also warn that such remission is uncommon, according to Fox 8.
Sharon Lewin, director of University of Melbourne's Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, said the finding was interesting but researchers "need to move beyond these anecdotal cases in our quest for a cure," The Guardian reports.
"The child received medication early after birth. We don't know whether she would have controlled the virus anyway without receiving the medication. About 1 percent of people can do that," Lewin said.
Lewin said that a trial is necessary to confirm if early treatment can keep the virus at bay.
"The only way we can address this is in a trial where we start a group of people very early on treatment and then randomize them to stop. These studies are happening in Thailand at the moment. They are going to be really informative," she added.
