Newborn HIV Cure

In an article titled, “Child Born With HIV is ‘functionally cured’” posted on March 3,2013 in the Los Angeles Times, tells the world about how a newborn, now two years old, is a survivor of HIV. Eryn Brown and Karen Kaplan reported that for the first time, doctors have reported that a child born with HIV was put on an unusually aggressive treatment regimen. This form of treatment has proven to functionally cure the infection. If the same remedy can work on other children, it could drastically save the lives of the estimated 1,000 babies born with HIV every day. Dr. Karin Nielsen, a pediatrician who specializes in infectious diseases said, “If there is a trial that shows this can happen again, then this will be very important” (Los Angeles Times). However, the concern is the possibility that he girl was not actually infected herself from her mother. It is true that in the United States and other developed countries, more than ninety eight percent of babies, born to mothers with HIV, do not receive the virus due to preventive treatments that begin before birth. In this case, the newborns mother was not aware that she had HIV until she took a screening test after she was in labor. Regardless, the attempt to replicate the results in other HIV-positive infants is the next step for doctors.