Author: Lucy Feickert
Recent news stories have been lauding a cure for auto-immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), an event with the potential to bring hope and health to millions of lives. But in delving into the articles below those astonishing headlines, it becomes evident that one startling case of an infant in Mississippi with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has generated all this media attention. While this case fosters greater understanding of infant HIV and new research opportunities in the medical community, it does not indicate a full cure for AIDS. Although the media has misrepresented the case of the infant with many sources claiming a cure for AIDS, not HIV, there is still a sliver of hope to be found from this development and all the scientific research that will come from it in the future.
HIV prevention expert and UC Irvine Professor Donald Forthal said in an article in the Orange County Register that excitement over a cure is premature. The findings from this particular case have not yet been extensively studied or published. While Forthal’s claim is accurate and the media coverage of this event was misleading, the base of the issue is a discovery, albeit a small one, that has the potential to lead to a cure for AIDS sometime in the future. Although adults and adolescents alive now with HIV or AIDS are still facing their disease without a cure, this case provides new information and a small step in the direction of a ubiquitous cure.
In media portrayal, the details of the case in Mississippi were confused and uncertain. Many headlines claimed a cure for AIDS, while the baby in question had HIV, which had not yet developed into AIDS. Additionally, this particular case is an isolated and unplanned event, not the result of tests and scientific research.
About two and a half years ago, an HIV-positive women in Mississippi gave birth to a baby. The women did not learn of her HIV status until she was in the hospital in labor and the doctor administered a test. Because the mother had not ever been in treatment for HIV, the doctor, pediatric HIV specialist at the University of Mississippi Dr. Hannah Gay, thought the baby might have a higher risk for HIV. According to the Wall Street Journal, Gay administered drugs outside the established procedure for the situation, which could have led to severe repercussions, but in this case did not. Rather than administering one of two anti-retroviral drugs to the infant, Gay gave the baby a three-drug cocktail of anti-retroviral drugs. Gay’s treatment was the typical treatment for HIV-positive adults, which is taken regularly throughout the patient’s life to control the disease, but not treat it. The three-drug treatment had never before been administered to infants, though after this case might become a more common treatment.
Gay said in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times that she just wanted to give this child the best chance possible, given the circumstances, and so decided to administer the unprecedented treatment. While Gay did not have scientific reasoning to administer this treatment, and some members of the medical community questioned her choice, because her actions led to this discovery rather than harm for the baby, her actions are justified. Gay continued to see the child every month until she was 18 months old. For unclear reasons, the child stopped receiving treatment and did not see a doctor for a year. When Gay saw the child again at about age two years and six months, planning to start aggressive HIV treatment, she administered tests and was unable to detect any trace of the virus in the child’s system.
While Gay states that it is not possible to say with certainty that the virus will never return, she has pronounced the child functionally cured of HIV, a pronouncement that has implications for people across the globe. According to MSNBC.com, there are 1,000 babies born every day with HIV, and now these developments signal greater hope at finding a cure for HIV in these individuals. Further tests and research of Gay’s treatment, which are ongoing, will hopefully reveal a new procedure of treatment for infant HIV.
The implication of this discovery is that there is a way to irradiate HIV in infants born with it, thus a way to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV and stem the growing population of people with HIV or AIDS. Because this case exhibits a child who had treatment administered 30 hours after birth, the potential resulting treatment innovations will be limited to infants and not be applicable to older people or those who have developed AIDS. This case does not indicate a new drug or an absolute procedure, but it does offer a new direction for research and hope for the future.
Lucy Feickert is an undeclared first-year. She can be reached at feickert@oxy.edu.
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