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Tag: AIDS cure

  • Baby Is HIV Free? Early Treatment May Have Cured

    The news that a second infant may have been cured of HIV has raised possibilities for the early treatment of infected newborns.

    On Wednesday doctors shared that an infant girl born to a high-risk mother in the Los Angeles area was possibly in remission. Doctors aren’t quite ready to say so, but according to Dr. Yvonne Bryson, an infectious disease specialist at Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA, “it looks like that.”

    There is a great deal of cautious optimism surrounding the case, which would be the second of its kind.

    Last April, there was a case of a toddler in Mississippi who had received early treatment for HIV which resulted in the disease going into remission. It continues to be so despite the now three-year-old girl having no treatment for roughly two years. She had been treated until about the age of 18 months. Ten months later, when the girl was brought back to the doctor, there was no sign of infection.

    Despite the Los Angeles infant’s possible remission status, it is noted that she is still receiving treatment for HIV.

    The uncertainty arises from what happens when the girl stops her treatment. There is a possibility that once the infant is taken off treatment, the virus can come back.

    Still, there is a good reason to be hopeful about this long term outcome of this second case.

    Dr. Deborah Persaud, a Johns Hopkins University physician who led the testing on the infected infant, said that the “signs are different from what doctors see in patients whose infections are merely suppressed by successful treatment.”

    The baby was born to a mother that the doctors at Miller Children’s Hospital Long Beach knew through a “previous pregnancy”. Dr. Audra Deveikis, a pediatric infectious disease specialist, said the mother had not taken her AIDS medication during the pregnancy, and the child was tested positive for HIV at birth, despite medication given to the mother while she was in labor.

    The baby is continuing her treatment while in foster care. According to Bryson she is “looking very healthy”.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • HIV Prevention Shot May Replace Pills

    HIV Prevention Shot May Replace Pills

    Two separate HIV studies on macaque monkeys show very promising results.

    Researchers from Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Rockefeller University in New York presented their findings on Tuesday at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Boston, Mass.

    They determined that a newly designed shot routinely taken four times a year could possibly protect people from the HIV virus.

    One San Francisco doctor from Gladstone Institute, which is affiliated with the University of California, told the Associated Press that two studies were “showing 100 percent protection” from the virus.

    “This is the most exciting innovation in the field of HIV prevention that I’ve heard recently,” said Dr. Robert Grant. “If it works and proves to be safe, it would allow for HIV to be prevented with periodic injections, perhaps every three months.”

    The GSK1265744 drug was the experimental medicine used in the latest research study. The drug company GlaxoSmithKline makes the potent drug.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was the first to test the effectiveness of the new drug.

    Two recent studies by the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center provided further validation.

    In the first study, 16 monkeys were exposed to the virus once a week for eight weeks. Eight of the monkeys were given two treatments within that time frame, whereas the remaining was given a placebo shot. In a second study, six out of 12 monkeys were given the shot.

    The end results for both experiments determined that those given GSK1265744 injections were protected from the virus for at least 5 to 10 weeks.

    Watch The Doctors cover a segment on monkeys used as a cure for HIV virus:

    Truvada, a HIV preventive pill already available to the public, may soon be replaced. Experts say that injections may prove to be a better option for people who are reluctant to taking pills.

    According to Bloomberg:

    “If successful, the injection may provide an alternative to Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD)’s Truvada pill, which won U.S. approval in 2012 to lower the chance of infection for people who don’t have the virus but are at risk of catching it.”

    Researchers from the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center have established that the next steps involve testing the shot on humans as a treatment first, and then as a preventive medication.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • U.S. to Invest $100 Million in AIDS Cure Research

    U.S. President Barack Obama today announced that the U.S. will invest research funds into the search for an AIDS cure. The announcement was part of an event held today at the White House to mark the 25th World AIDS Day.

    The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) will be investing $100 million over the next three years specifically on AIDS research that is working toward a total cure for the disease. Such research is now seen as “promising,” after three decades of working to curtail the epidemic with antiretroviral medications.

    Though a cure for AIDS is closer than ever, the NIH does caution that finding one will require a concerted effort and collaboration among the various organizations working for the cause. The goal of the efforts, according to the NIH, will be either a full cure for AIDS or a method to induce a lifelong remission of the HIV virus.

    “Although the HIV/AIDS pandemic can theoretically be ended with a concerted and sustained scale-up of implementation of existing tools for HIV prevention and treatment, the development of a cure is critically important, as it may not be feasible for tens of millions of people living with HIV infection to access and adhere to a lifetime of antiretroviral therapy,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “Our growing understanding of the cellular hiding places or ‘reservoirs’ of HIV, the development of new strategies to minimize or deplete these reservoirs, and encouraging reports of a small number of patients who have little or no evidence of virus despite having halted antiretroviral therapy, all suggest that the time is ripe to pursue HIV cure research with vigor.”

    With sequestration funding levels heavily affecting the HIH, the new AIDS cure funding will be gathered from existing NIH resources. Much of the funding will be redirected from expiring AIDS research grants. According to the NIH, the funds will be used for research on viral reservoirs, viral latency, viral persistence, and the neutralization of antibodies. Testing and clinical trials will also be supported through the funding initiative.