Doctors Strongly Recommend That All Pregnant Women To Have A Blood Test For HIV

Doctors Strongly Recommend That All Pregnant Women To Have A Blood Test For HIV.
A babe in arms born two-and-a-half years ago in Mississippi with HIV is the sooner invalid of a so-called "functional cure" of the infection, researchers announced Sunday. Standard tests can no longer discover any traces of the AIDS-causing virus even though the child has discontinued HIV medication. "We hold this is the first well-documented case of a functional cure," said about lead author Dr Deborah Persaud, associate professor of pediatrics in the borderline of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore order thyromine with mastercard. The finding was presented Sunday at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, in Atlanta.

The neonate was not part of a study but, instead, the beneficiary of an unexpected and partly unplanned course of events that - once confirmed and replicated in a straitened study - might help more children who are born with HIV or who at risk of contracting HIV from their take care of eradicate the virus from their body. Normally, mothers infected with HIV take antiretroviral drugs that can almost waste the odds of the virus being transferred to the baby nuskhe. If a mother doesn't have knowledge of her HIV status or hasn't been treated for other reasons, the baby is given "prophylactic" drugs at birth while awaiting the results of tests to govern his or her HIV status.

This can take four to six weeks to complete. If the tests are positive, the tot starts HIV drug treatment. The mammy of the baby born in Mississippi didn't know she was HIV-positive until the time of delivery.

But in this case, both the monogram and confirmatory tests on the baby were able to be completed within one day, allowing the baby to be started on HIV dull treatment within the first 30 hours of life. "Most of our kids don't get picked up that early". As expected, the baby's "viral load" - detectable levels of HIV - decreased progressively until it was no longer detectable at 29 days of age.

Theoretically, this teenager (doctors aren't disclosing the gender) would have charmed the medications for the indolence of his or her life, said the researchers, who included doctors from the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Instead, the lass stayed on the regimen for only 18 months before dropping out of the medical technique and discontinuing the drugs.

Ten months after stopping treatment, however, the newborn was again seen by doctors who were surprised to find no HIV virus or HIV antibodies with par tests. Ultrasensitive tests did detect infinitesimal traces of viral DNA and RNA in the blood. But the virus was not replicating - a decidedly unusual occurrence given that drugs were no longer being administered, the researchers said.