An 18 and a half -year-old French woman infected from birth has had her HIV infection under control and almost undetectable despite stopping treatment 12 years ago – an unprecedented virological remission.
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It is believed that girl was infected with HIV either at the end of her mother’s pregnancy or during childbirth itself.
These patients are a very rare exception to the rule, doctors caution: the vast majority of patients with HIV who stop treatment experience a rebound in virus levels that, if left untreated, can harm their health.
Prof Sharon Lewin, from the University of Melbourne, in Australia, said: “The French teenager case provides strong evidence yet again of the powerful benefits of starting anti-HIV treatment as early as possible”.
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These factors suggest that early drug treatment is responsible for her HIV remission, Saez-Cirion said, the AP reported.
“We don’t know yet why this girl was able to control the infection”, lead researcher Asier Saez-Cirion from the Institut Pasteur said.
Experts say more trials are needed to determine if early treatment of HIV helps in long-term remission. That sets them apart from the elite controllers, who in contrast seem to have genetic traits associated with greater ability to control the infection.
The news followed the report of a Mississippi baby who, in 2013, was thought to be “functionally cured” before doctors found detectable levels of HIV one year later, according to CNN.
“Throughout our decade-long study with more than 1,600 heterosexual couples, we did not observe HIV transmission when the HIV-infected partner’s virus was stably suppressed by antiretroviral therapy”, study leader Dr. Myron Cohen, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said.
AIDS researchers released a call to action Sunday, July 20, for a worldwide shift in HIV treatment, to providing medication immediately after diagnosis instead of first watching for signs of illness to appear, AFP reports.
“I’m sure there will be others in the future”, he said, noting there are still relatively few studies of children infected at birth who are now young adults and have been monitored for their entire lives.
“This girl is in remission”, Saez-Cirion said in an interview. When that failed and she tested positive for HIV, doctors started her on a four-drug regimen of anti-AIDS drugs.
Except for one brief rise in her viral load when she was 11, the virus in her blood has remained below a detection threshold ever since.
Doctors reporting the news did say the girl experienced one rise in virus levels when she was 11. “While we focus on the effort to get all people with HIV on treatment, we must also muster all resources to make sure the sickest and the most vulnerable in low-coverage countries, including children, are urgently enrolled into care”.
It isn’t yet known though if the remission will last.
The French girl and the other VISCONTI patients share particular variants of immune genes that actually seem to predispose them to particularly severe early HIV infections.
To evaluate the safety of early treatment, potentially life-threatening symptomatic events not attributable to AIDS and unscheduled hospitalizations for reasons other than AIDS were assessed in both treatment groups.
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The landmark study, financed with more than $100 million in federal research grants, confirmed initial results reported in 2011 and demonstrated that AIDS medications known as antiretroviral therapy, or ART, can suppress the virus for years.
