A groundbreaking study published in Nature Medicine gives insight into what an HIV cure could look like during infancy
Lost your password? Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.Lost your password? Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.
The five babies all had one thing in common: they were all boys, they were all infected with HIV in the womb, and they’d all been given antiretroviral treatment minutes after their first breath. Most infants start treatment in the first two days of life. Four of the five boys had gone without treatment for periods of three to 10 months. These mothers explained that for various social reasons, they weren’t able to keep collecting HIV medicine to give to their children, Goulder says.
Goulder and his colleagues ran immune system tests on mothers and their babies to understand what was happening. If the mother becomes infected with HIV and she doesn’t get treatment, the virus will be free to infect both babies. When the virus reaches the male foetus, his immune system isn’t yet able to use interferons to put up a fight, so the virus can infiltrate his cells easily without any interferon-specific defences.
Once the baby boy is born, his body begins to make interferons, which the virus can’t handle, and it’s also not able to replicate enough to maintain an infection. That means the virus circulating in the baby boy is toast. Once the virus is past the mother’s system, it will have to mutate again to infect the baby girl but will sail past the male twin’s defences largely unchanged.
South Africa Latest News, South Africa Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Senior Systems Support Officer at Mancosa - KwaZulu-Natal KwaZulu-NatalIT Industry News. Daily.
Read more »
Software developer (Junior to Mid Level) - KwaZulu-Natal KwaZulu-NatalIT Industry News. Daily.
Read more »
Software Developer (Power Platform) (Durban) - KwaZulu-Natal DurbanIT Industry News. Daily.
Read more »
KwaZulu-Natal residents are poor, hungry — and tired of Eskom’s hefty tariff hikesThe power utility is guilty of trying to ‘milk a cow that no longer has the ability to produce’, a ratepayer told regulator Nersa at its public hearings in Durb
Read more »
KwaZulu-Natal Motorist Loses Control and Drives Into a Group of ChildrenA motorist crashed into a group of children who were sitting on a pavement in Effingham, Durban in KwaZulu-Natal. The children were not injured.
Read more »
BLEAK start to festive season on the roads in Gauteng and KwaZulu-NatalThe festive season has started on a bleak note, with statistics showing that in the first six days of this month 193 deaths were recorded.
Read more »