virus

Medicine The world, or at least our corner of it, awoke to the news of the first child which has been "cured" of HIV. There are multiple news sources, but PBS Newshour has an interview with one of the scientists involved. The implications are staggering:

"... kids still get infected, and the guidelines recommend treatment during the first year of life. I think what this suggests to us is that if we treat earlier -- even earlier -- within the first several days to week of infection perhaps (though we don't know what that window would be) that we may be able to markedly curtail the amount of virus and the extent of viral reservoirs that are set up in the body. By doing so, and by treating for a period of time, we may get to a point where we could allow children to safely discontinue therapy. That is the hypothesis that this particular case raises, and now we're constructing the clinical trials to look exactly at that."

It's also another classic case of how chance and happen-stance are still hugely important within scientific and medical exploration.