<story><title>HIV-Infected Infant Cured With Early Use of AIDS Drugs</title><url>http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-03/hiv-infected-infant-cured-with-early-use-of-virus-blocking-drugs.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>carbocation</author><text>One has to wonder if the infant is homozygous for the noted CCR5 variant that confers resistance to HIV infection. This could potentially explain a high viral load with negative titers later.&lt;p&gt;I can&apos;t tell (from the relatively scant details) if the child ever developed HIV infection, by which I specifically mean to include infiltration of a cell by the virus, replication, and a host reaction. I can&apos;t find text in the articles describing which blood tests were done on the child. If her ELISA and Western blot are negative (still) but she initially had a nucleic acid amplification test that was positive with high titer, then it would make me wonder if the drugs, for this baby, were not necessarily the key element causing her to be disease free. I.e., I would wonder if the infant weren&apos;t actually cured because she was never fully infected in the first place.&lt;p&gt;If she was truly infected and her body was reacting to the replicated pathogen, then this early treatment strategy is extremely interesting.</text></comment>
<story><title>HIV-Infected Infant Cured With Early Use of AIDS Drugs</title><url>http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-03/hiv-infected-infant-cured-with-early-use-of-virus-blocking-drugs.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>gojomo</author><text>I wonder how this child&apos;s &quot;blood remains free of the virus&quot; status compares to the &apos;undetectable&apos; viral loads reported for others (eg Magic Johnson) for many years. Is there a qualitative difference?</text></comment>