French teen in 'unprecedented' remission from HIV
AIDS researchers are reporting an "unprecedented" remission in a French teenager who was infected with HIV at birth but who has been off medication for 12 years.
The girl, now 18, was born to an HIV-infected mother, according to a study presented at a meeting of the International AIDS Society in Vancouver. Doctors gave her medication aimed at preventing infection. When that failed and she tested positive for HIV, doctors started her on a four-drug regimen of anti-AIDS drugs. The girl continued the therapy until age 6, according to the study, led by Asier Saez-Cirion of the Pasteur Institute in Paris.
Doctors lost contact with the girl after that. When she reappeared a year later, her mother told doctors that she had stopped giving the girl HIV drugs. Doctors retested the girl, but HIV levels in her blood were below levels detectable with standard tests.
She hasn't received HIV medicines since. With one exception, tests over the past 12 years have found levels of HIV in her blood to be extremely low.
The girl's case shows that "long-term remission is possible, even in children, and it can go out as long as 12 years," AIDS researcher Sharon Lewin said. "But we still need a lot of work to know why."
Lewin, who wasn't involved in the new study, is director of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, a joint venture between the University of Melbourne and Royal Melbourne Hospital in Australia.
While it's possible that the girl's remission is the result of early treatment, it's also possible that the girl is among the 1% of HIV patients whose immune systems fight off the AIDS virus on their own, said Warner Greene, director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology at University of California, San Francisco. These "elite responders," while still infected with HIV, are "functionally" cured, because their HIV levels are almost undetected without medication, said Greene, who wasn't involved with the new study.
Normally, HIV levels rebound within six to eight weeks of stopping medication, Greene said.
Elite responders appear to have "a particularly good immune response that others don't have," Greene said. "It's not perfect. It doesn't eliminate the virus. The virus persists at very low levels."
As for the French teenager, "it's just too early, and the laboratory data is too sparse, to really figure out what is going on," Greene said.
In 2013, doctors hoped that a Mississippi girl born with HIV had been cured of the virus. The girl, who was treated for HIV as a baby, had no detectable virus 18 months after stopping treatment. Last year, doctors announced that the girl's HIV had returned.
Few babies are born with HIV in developed countries because doctors routinely test pregnant women for the virus and give them drugs that prevent infection in their newborns.
Contributing: Associated Press
