October 7, 2014 - AIDSmeds
Echoing the disappointment of the "Mississippi baby" case, a second child has experienced viral rebound after it was suspected he was functionally cured of HIV, The Washington Post reports. In a case study published in The Lancet, researchers describe the case of a boy born to an HIV-positive mother in Milan, Italy, in December 2009 who, like the Mississippi baby, was put on an atypically aggressive regimen of antiretrovirals (ARVs) shortly after birth and who later showed no signs of the virus in his body, even in highly sensitive tests.
When the child was 3 years old, clinicians decided to take him off ARVs. He maintained an undetectable viral load for a week, but by the second week, he had a viral load of 36,840. His medical team put him back on ARVs, and he returned to having an undetectable viral load by standard tests. Continue reading…