Toddler ‘Functionally Cured’ of HIV Infection, NIH-Supported Investigators Report

Discovery Provides Clues for Potentially Eliminating HIV Infection in Other Children.

Editor’s note: NIH issued this news release this afternoon about findings announced at the 2013 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections on Monday, March 4, 2013.

A two-year-old child born with HIV infection and treated with antiretroviral drugs beginning in the first days of life no longer has detectable levels of virus using conventional testing despite not taking HIV medication for 10 months, according to findings presented today at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic InfectionsExit Disclaimer (CROI) in Atlanta.

This is the first well-documented case of an HIV-infected child who appears to have been functionally cured of HIV infection—that is, without detectable levels of virus and no signs of disease in the absence of antiretroviral therapy.

Further research is needed to understand whether the experience of the child can be replicated in clinical trials involving other HIV-exposed children, according to the investigators.

The case study was presented at the CROI meeting by Deborah Persaud, M.D., associate professor of infectious diseases at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore, and Katherine Luzuriaga, M.D., professor of pediatrics and molecular medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester. These two pediatric HIV experts led the analysis of the case. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), both components of the National Institutes of Health (amfAR) also contributed funding.

For more information about NIAID’s HIV/AIDS cure research, see the NIAID HIV/AIDS Web portal on the CROI website.

NIAID conducts and supports research—at NIH, throughout the United States, and worldwide—to study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases, and to develop better means of preventing, diagnosing and treating these illnesses. News releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related materials are available on the NIAID Web site at www.niaid.nih.gov.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.