Why the HIV Cure Cannot be Reproduced, For Now

By now everyone has heard the miraculous story of a 2 year old being cured of HIV. It's the second reported case of a HIV cure next to Timothy Browns case that involved a bone marrow stem cell transplant from a donor immune to HIV (more on that later).

The Mississippi baby cured of HIV received anitviral drugs within 31 hours of birth and continued to receive these medications for the next 18 months. At this time the mother and child stopped coming to the hospital to  receive the "cocktail". Both mother and child had left their home bu were eventually found after a year. When the doctors examined the baby they found no replicating traces of HIV.

A wonderful outcome to the story as doctors were sure they would have found the virus running rampant throughout the babies body. However the results of this story cannot be reproduced because in order to examine if it was just this child or it could occur in others doctors would have to not give life saving drugs to a child born with HIV. Medical ethics prevent doctors from denying life saving coverage to a patient.

A major breakthrough in HIV research even though it will be difficult to reproduce the results. Similar to the case of Timothy Brown who was cured of HIV while being treated for leukemia. The bone marrow stem cell treatment Brown received was from a person who was immune to HIV. Unfortunately this is a treatment that may not be reproduced due to the difficulty of finding a bone marrow doner match. Odds of finding a match are 1 in 540 according to the National Bone Marrow Program. Put that together with the odds of finding a doner who is from the 1 percent of persons descended from Northern Europeans and it's unfortunately highly unlikely a HIV cure will be found in a individual.

Despite the difficulty of repeating these cases they still offer new insight into the virus. For years the medical community has worked to defeat HIV and with continued treatments and advancements in medical technologies, health officials are making continued progress in defeating HIV once and for all.