Back when Dennis Miller was still funny, he made that awesome joke about what would happen when they finally cured AIDS. Nearly 25 years after his wry comment, it is getting closer to actually being true.
Doctors are saying a baby born with the virus that causes AIDS appears to have been cured. The child, who is 2½, has been off medication for about a year, with no signs of infection. Traces of the virus' genetic material are still present, but if they're confident enough to claim it's a victory over the disease, adding only the second mark ever into the cure column.
The baby was given a faster and stronger treatment than normal, starting with a three-drug infusion less than 30 hours after being born - this was before tests confirmed the infant was infected and not just at risk from the mother (whose HIV wasn't diagnosed until she was in labor). Dr. Hannah Gay (are you fucking kidding me?), a pediatric HIV specialist at the University of Mississippi, believes the fast action knocked out HIV in the baby's blood before it could hideout in the body. Those reservoirs of dormant cells usually rapidly reinfect anyone who stops medication, and though the child is "functionally cured", it may truly be more accurate to call it long-term remission. The aggressive treatment will continue on other high-risk babies, with the intent to block this reservoir seeding and replicate this success.
The only other person considered cured of the AIDS virus underwent a bone marrow transplant from a special donor, one of the rare people who is naturally resistant to HIV. Timothy Ray Brown has not needed HIV medications in the five years since that transplant, but is also a very unique case like this baby. Perhaps the hyperbole about curing AIDS makes for better headlines and is not quite the reality, but it is progress. Personally, they should just give people whatever the hell Magic Johnson is taking, because he's the most robust and healthy looking HIV positive person ever.
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