Stockbyte/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Researchers at Johns Hopkins University say that even though a baby in Mississippi who was initially thought to have been cured of HIV later relapsed, there may have been important information gleaned from the case.
The unnamed girl, dubbed the “Mississippi baby,” was born to an HIV-positive mother in 2010. After being treated with high doses of antiretroviral medication, she was deemed cured, but four years later, detectable levels of HIV were found in her blood. Still, researchers said, they learned from that.
The girl’s relapse helped to support the theory that CD4+ memory T cells, a specific type of immune cell, harbors the latent virus. Potential treatments, they note, could be aimed at reducing the number of those specific cells.
The article, published in the journal Science, also looked at two other patients who had been deemed “cured” before relapsing.
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