With little more then a shoddy CNN report to work from I have to say that this latest effort from Dr Hannah Gay at the 2013 Conference on Retrovirus and Opportunist Infections in Atlanta looks promising at best.
Basically in autumn/winter 2010 a female child (we're assuming black) was born to a HIV+ mother in Mississippi, USA. For unspecified reasons mainly relating to poor Americans access to routine health care (Obamacare) Doctors were not able to intervene with the usual prevention of mother to child HIV infection - a single dose of "Neviraprine" prior to birth along with single dose Nevriaprine after birth and abstention from breastfeeding. However within 30 hours of birth Dr Gay was treating the infant with three anti-retroviral drugs. The exact nature of these drugs are as yet unspecified but believed to be similar to the cocktail used in Gilead's single pill "Stribild" treatment.
After 18 months of treatment the infants viral load was so low as to be undectable by standard HIV tests but I believe was still present in more advanced testing procedures. What is interesting though was that 8-10 months after the 3 drug anti-retroviral treatment stopped the infants HIV viral load did not increase (rebound), was still undetectable by standard HIV tests and so low it was detectable but immeasurable by more advanced testing procedures. This is known as "a functional cure."
However the 8-10 month treatment gap is nearly exactly the length of time a mother must use Nestle baby formula rather then breastfeed under the Neviaprine regime. The arguments about the sale of Nestle baby formula in Africa are so epic they even include European Union (EU) legislation that makes it illegal to suggest that you should not breastfeed a child.
Therefore it will be at least another decade or two before I stop worrying about HIV/AIDS.
00:45 on 4/3/13.
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