Another baby carrying a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has reportedly been cured by early treatment against the disease.
Researchers have announced Wednesday that another unidentified nine-month-old baby girl born at Miller Children's Hospital in Long Beach, Calif., who was known to have the disease, responded well to the early administration on antiretroviral drug and is now HIV free.
During a medical conference in Boston, Deborah Persaud, M.D., a pediatrics specialist and virologist from Johns Hopkins University, said that no trace of the lentivirus can now be detected in the infant's blood and tissues.
HIV causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), which causes severe damage to the infected person's immune system. Researchers estimate that more than 34 million people around the world are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus.
The successful intervention for the disease is the second such case.
The first case was described last March 2013 at the Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections Conference. It involves an infant from Mississippi who was diagnosed to be positive from HIV. After early treatments, the infant positively progressed to being HIV-free.
"This is a call to action for us to mobilize and be able to learn from these cases," Persaud said to BBC News. "Really the only way we can prove that we have accomplished remission in these kids is by taking them off treatment and that's not without risk."
As of press time, the California baby is still receiving a three-drug anti-AIDS cocktail -- AZT, 3TC and nevirapine. The Mississippi kid, on the other hand, who is now three years old, has stopped receiving treatments a couple of years ago.
The three-drug treatment is not usually given until they are 100 percent positive that the baby is infected, and even if they are sure, the treatment is not usually administered in the first weeks of life.
However, "the mother's disease was not under control, and I had to weigh the risk of transmission against the toxicity of the meds," said Audra Deveikis, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Long Beach, Calif., to New York Times.
