A South African girl born with the AIDS virus has kept her infection suppressed for more than eight years after stopping anti-HIV medicines -- more evidence that early treatment can occasionally cause a long remission that, if it lasts, would be a form of cure. This case is rare, but it seems to suggest that babies who are infected and treated right away may someday not need a life of treatment.At the AIDS conference in Paris, it was reported that the number of people living with HIV is startling. It gives us hope that we may be able to do the same in more than just children,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health told NBC News in an interview from Paris, where he is attending the conference. A nine-year-old South African child who was diagnosed with HIV shortly after her birth in 2007 has now been in remission for eight-and-a-half years, scientists say – even though she only received anti-HIV drugs for a short period during her infancy. When researchers conducted a thorough analysis of the child's blood at nine-and-a-half years of age, they detected a reservoir of virus integrated into a tiny proportion of immune cells – called latent HIV – the sole remaining evidence of any HIV infection. Dr Hannah Gay, a paediatric HIV consultant at the hospital, took the decision to put the baby on a particularly strong course of antiretroviral drugs within 30 hours of the birth, before she even had any HIV test results. The case was presented Monday at the AIDS conference in Paris.There have been other cases where treatment didn't work or the virus eventually reappeared. In 2015, researchers in France reported the case of an HIV-positive child who began treatment at 3 months of age, but later stopped treatment and remained HIV-free more than 11 years later. Aggressive treatment soon after infection might enable that in some cases, and the South African girl is the third child who achieved a long remission after that approach.
A girl born with HIV, who was started on HIV drugs when she was 2 months old and stopped 40 weeks later, is virtually-free of the virus even after no further treatment.