Posted on May 05, 2014
Source: The Globe and Mail
A Canadian preschooler who doctors hoped was essentially cured of HIV experienced a swift resurgence of the virus after being taken off medication, an outcome researchers are calling a “cautionary tale” for scientists trying to wipe out the disease in its youngest sufferers.
The 3-year-old was one of five Canadian children that a team of pediatric HIV-AIDS researchers in this country identified after hearing the astonishing story of the Mississippi baby, an American girl, now 3, who appears to have been "functionally cured" of the virus that causes AIDS.
The Canadian group, which presented its preliminary results at the Canadian Conference on HIV-AIDS research in St. John’s on Saturday, found no evidence of the virus lurking in four other HIV-positive children who received high doses of three drugs shortly after birth, just like the Mississippi child.
However, unlike in the cases of the Mississippi and the Canadian preschooler whose viral load rebounded, the other four Canadian children are still taking the antiretrovirals that keep the virus a bay.
The only way to say for certain that the Canadian children have been "functionally cured" is to halt their medications, an ethical dilemma for doctors who do not want to put their small patients' immune systems at risk.
“Talking about an HIV cure is, in my view and I think [the view of] our team as a whole, premature,” said Ari Bitnun, a physician in the department of infectious diseases at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. “Whether or not the outcome of the Mississippi baby can be replicated, I don’t think there is an answer to that question yet.”
The Canadian researchers’ quest began when Deborah Persaud, a pediatric infectious disease physician at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore, revealed the story of the Mississippi baby at the March 2013 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta.
