South African girl is third child with HIV remission
(VOVWORLD) - Hopes for an HIV cure revived as a nine-year-old South African child became the third in remission, researchers announced Monday at an AIDS conference in Paris.
Diagnosed with the HIV virus on the 32nd day after her birth, the child was given a 10-month course of anti-AIDS medicine, then taken off the drugs as part of a medical trial. Experiments show that the level of HIV virus in her blood has changed from “very high” to “undetectable”. Some scientists refer to sustained, drug-free remission as a “functional cure.” Two previous remission cases are 46-year-old Timothy Brown in the West of the US, announced in July, 2012, and a 2-year-old American child, announced in March, 2013.