Nine-year-old SA girl achieves ‘functional HIV cure’

Paris — A South African girl has become only the third child to beat the AIDS virus into long-term remission — almost nine years and counting — after receiving a drug cocktail in infancy, researchers announced on Monday. The child was given a 10-month course of antiretrovirals (ARVs) until she was one year old, and then taken off the drugs as part of a medical trial. Eight years and nine months later, the virus is still dormant and the girl is healthy without needing treatment, a research team reported at the International AIDS Society conference on HIV science in Paris. "This new case strengthens our hope that by treating HIV-infected children for a brief period beginning in infancy, we may be able to spare them the burden of life-long therapy," said HIV/AIDS expert Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Niaid), which funded the study. Some scientists refer to sustained, drug-free remission as a "functional cure". Unlike a traditional ...