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now has detectable levels of HIV after more than two years of not taking antiretroviral therapy without evidence of virus

"Scientifically, this development reminds us that we still have much more to learn about the intricacies of HIV infection and where the virus hides in the body. The NIH remains committed to moving forward with research on a cure for HIV infection."

NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D.

The researchers planning the clinical trial will now need to take this new development into account

The child was born prematurely in a Mississippi clinic in 2010 to an HIV-infected mother who did not receive antiretroviral medication during pregnancy and was not diagnosed with HIV infection until the time of delivery

Because of the high risk of HIV exposure, the infant was started at 30 hours of age on liquid, triple-drug antiretroviral treatment.

Testing confirmed within several days that the baby had been infected with HIV. At two weeks of age, the baby was discharged from the hospital and continued on liquid antiretroviral therapy

The baby continued on antiretroviral treatment until 18 months of age, when the child was lost to follow up and no longer received treatment

when the child was again seen by medical staff five months later, blood samples revealed undetectable HIV levels (less than 20 copies of HIV per milliliter of blood (copies/mL)) and no HIV-specific antibodies

The child continued to do well in the absence of antiretroviral medicines and was free of detectable HIV for more than two years

Repeat viral load blood testing performed 72 hours later confirmed this finding

Additionally, the child had decreased levels of

a key component of a normal immune system, and the presence of HIV antibodies

Based on these results, the child was again started on antiretroviral therapy

To date, the child is tolerating the medication with no side effects and treatment is decreasing virus levels

Genetic sequencing of the virus indicated that the child's HIV infection was the same strain acquired from the mother

In light of the new findings, researchers must now work to better understand what enabled the child to remain off treatment for more than two years without detectable virus or measurable immunologic response

what might be done to extend the period of sustained HIV remission in the absence of antiretroviral therapy

"Typically, when treatment is stopped, HIV levels rebound within weeks, not years."

"The prolonged lack of viral rebound, in the absence of HIV-specific immune responses, suggests that the very early therapy not only kept this child clinically well, but also restricted the number of cells harboring HIV infection," said Katherine Luzuriaga, M.D., professor of molecular medicine, pediatrics and medicine at the University of Massachusetts

The case

indicates that early antiretroviral treatment in this HIV-infected infant did not completely eliminate the reservoir of HIV-infected cells that was established upon infection

may have considerably limited its development and averted the need for antiretroviral medication over a considerable period

during a routine clinical care visit earlier this month, the child, now nearly 4 years of age, was found to have detectable HIV levels in the blood

investigators

investigators say the prompt administration of antiviral treatment likely led to this infant's cure by halting the formation of hard-to-treat viral reservoirs

Prompt antiviral therapy in newborns that begins within days of exposure may help infants clear the virus and achieve long-term remission without lifelong treatment by preventing such viral hideouts from forming in the first place

dormant cells responsible for reigniting the infection in most HIV patients within weeks of stopping therapy

researchers say they believe this is precisely what happened in the child described in the report

"functionally cured," a condition that occurs when a patient achieves and maintains long-term viral remission without lifelong treatment and standard clinical tests fail to detect HIV replication in the blood

a sterilizing cure—a complete eradication of all viral traces from the body

a functional cure occurs when viral presence is so minimal, it remains undetectable by standard clinical tests, yet discernible by ultrasensitive methods

The child described

was born to an HIV-infected mother and received combination antiretroviral treatment beginning 30 hours after birth.

A series of tests showed progressively diminishing viral presence in the infant's blood, until it reached undetectable levels 29 days after birth

The infant remained on antivirals until 18 months of age, at which point the child was lost to follow-up for a while

Ten months after discontinuation of treatment, the child underwent repeated standard blood tests, none of which detected HIV presence in the blood

Test for HIV-specific antibodies—the standard clinical indicator of HIV infection—also remained negative

Currently, high-risk newborns—those born to mothers with poorly controlled infections or whose mothers' HIV status is discovered around the time of delivery—receive a combination of antivirals at prophylactic doses to prevent infection for six weeks and start therapeutic doses if and once infection is diagnosed

this particular case

may change the current practice because it highlights the curative potential of very early ART

natural viral suppression without treatment is an exceedingly rare phenomenon observed in less than half a percent of HIV-infected adults

HIV experts have long sought a way to help all HIV patients achieve elite-controller status

"elite controllers," whose immune systems are able to rein in viral replication and keep the virus at clinically undetectable levels

investigators caution they don't have enough data to recommend change right now to the current practice of treating high-risk infants

but the infant's case provides the rationale to start proof-of-principle studies in all high-risk newborns

next step is to find out if this is a highly unusual response to very early antiretroviral therapy or something we can actually replicate in other high-risk newborns

A single case of sterilizing cure has been reported so far

in an HIV-positive man treated with a bone marrow transplant for leukemia. The bone marrow cells came from a donor with a rare genetic mutation of the white blood cells that renders some people resistant to HIV

Such a complex treatment approach, however, HIV experts agree, is neither feasible nor practical for the 33 million people worldwide infected with HIV

researchers say preventing mother-to-child transmission remains the primary goal

Prevention really is the best cure, and we already have proven strategies that can prevent 98 percent of newborn infections by identifying and treating HIV-positive pregnant women

Bee venom contains a potent toxin called melittin that can poke holes in the protective envelope that surrounds HIV, and other viruses

in addition to anti-viral therapy, the paper's senior author

has shown melittin-loaded nanoparticles to be effective in killing tumor cells.

The new study shows that melittin loaded onto these nanoparticles does not harm normal cells

because

added protective bumpers to the nanoparticle surface

When the nanoparticles come into contact with normal cells, which are much larger in size, the particles simply bounce off

HIV, on the other hand, is even smaller than the nanoparticle, so HIV fits between the bumpers and makes contact with the surface of the nanoparticle, where the bee toxin awaits

, an advantage of this approach is that the nanoparticle attacks an essential part of the virus' structure. In contrast, most anti-HIV drugs inhibit the virus's ability to replicate.

this anti-replication strategy does nothing to stop initial infection, and some strains of the virus have found ways around these drugs and reproduce anyway.

attacking an inherent physical property of HIV

Theoretically, there isn't any way for the virus to adapt to that

potential for using nanoparticles with melittin as therapy for existing HIV infections, especially those that are drug-resistant

Since melittin attacks double-layered membranes indiscriminately, this concept is not limited to HIV.

Many viruses, including hepatitis B and C, rely on the same kind of protective envelope and would be vulnerable to melittin-loaded nanoparticles

They discovered that increasing the random activity, or noise, associated with HIV gene expression–without increasing the average level of gene expression–can reactivate latent HIV

When HIV infects an immune cell, it inserts its genetic material into the DNA of the infected cell

In most cases, the immune cell's

makes copies of the viral genetic material

eventually leads to the production

of all the components needed to make more viruses

In some cases, however, HIV

goes into a holding pattern and the virus enters a latent state within the infected immune cell

This means that a small percentage of HIV hides in infected cells, beyond the reach of even the most potent drugs

people with HIV infection have to take antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) for the rest of their lives

Roy Dar, PhD,

"If we can make the virus show itself, we can then use ARVs to eliminate it.

This so-called 'shock and kill' approach holds great promise, but to date it has unfortunately shown only limited success."

In this study, the team tested the counter-intuitive notion that compounds that increase noise in gene expression could work together with transcriptional activators to increase overall levels of HIV reactivation

They found that while the noise enhancers could not cause reactivation on their own, 75 percent of them could synergize with activators and increase viral reactivation relative to activator alone

some noise enhancers doubled reactivation levels when combined with activators

"The implications for using noise also extend far beyond HIV reactivation, since random cellular activity contributes to a wide range of processes, from antibiotic persistence to cancer metastasis

Dr. Weinberger

current antiretroviral drugs require daily intake.

These especially potent antibodies were only recently discovered

identified and cloned from HIV-infected patients whose immune systems showed an unusually high ability to neutralize HIV

Antibodies had been written off as a treatment for HIV/AIDS because previous studies showed only a limited effect on controlling the virus

before these more potent antibodies were discovered

HIV-1 is notorious for evading the immune system's attacks by constantly mutating

antibodies target HIV-1's surface protein gp160, a large molecule that forms a spike that seeks out host cells and attaches to them

One antibody alone wasn't enough to quell the virus; neither was a mix of three

five of them in unison proved too complicated for gp160 to mutate its way out of.

Although HIV-1 infection in humanized mice differs in many important aspects from infection in humans, the results are encouraging to investigate these antibodies in clinical trials

It also may be that a combination of antibodies and the already established antiretroviral therapy is more efficacious than either alone

could be used as a treatment one day, it is conceivable that patients would only need to take traditional drugs until the virus is controlled

then receive antibodies every two to three months to maintain that control

that led doctors worldwide to rethink how fast and hard to treat infants born with HIV

In another AIDS-related development, scientists have modified genes in the blood cells of a dozen adults to help them resist HIV.

The Mississippi baby is now 3 1/2 and seems HIV-free despite no treatment for about two years

baby is still getting AIDS medicines, so the status of her infection is not as clear.

A host of sophisticated tests at multiple times suggest the LA baby has completely cleared the virus

The baby's signs are different from what doctors see in patients whose infections are merely suppressed by successful treatment,

don't know if the baby is in remission ... but it looks like

Doctors are cautious about suggesting she has been cured

Most HIV-infected moms in the U.S. get AIDS medicines during pregnancy, which greatly cuts the chances they will pass the virus to their babies

The LA baby was born

mother

was not taking her HIV medicines

Four weeks later, half of the patients were temporarily taken off AIDS medicines to see the gene therapy's effect

started the baby on them a few hours after birth. Tests later confirmed she had been infected, but does not appear to be now, nearly a year later

study in adults was prompted by an AIDS patient who appears cured after getting a cell transplant seven years ago

from a donor with natural immunity to the virus

Only about 1 percent of people have two copies of the gene that gives this protection

HIV usually infects blood cells through a protein on their surface called CCR5. A California company, Sangamo BioSciences Inc., makes a treatment that can knock out a gene that makes CCR5.

tested it in 12 HIV patients who had their blood filtered to remove some of their cells. The treated cells were infused back into the patients

The mom was given AIDS drugs during labor to try to prevent transmission of the virus

The Mississippi girl was treated until she was 18 months old, when doctors lost contact with her

Ten months later when she returned, they could find no sign of infection even though the mom had stopped giving her AIDS medicines.

a federally funded study just getting underway to see if very early treatment can cure HIV infection

About 60 babies in the U.S. and other countries will get very aggressive treatment that will be discontinued if tests over a long time, possibly two years, suggest no active infection.

The virus returned in all but one of them; that patient turned out to have one copy of the protective gene

knew that the virus was going to come back in most of the patients

the hope is that the modified cells eventually will outnumber the rest and give the patient a way to control viral levels without medicines

17 January – NASA announces that the Kepler space observatory has developed a reaction wheel issue

2 January A study by Caltech astronomers reports that the Milky Way Galaxy contains at least one planet per sta

3 January

8 January

20 January – Scientists prove that quadruple-helix DNA is present in human cells

25 January

An international team of scientists develops a functional light-based "tractor beam", which allows individual cells to be selected and moved at will. The invention could have broad applications in medicine and microbiology

30 January – South Korea conducts its first successful orbital launch

6 February

Astronomers report that 6% of all dwarf stars – the most common stars in the known universe – may host Earthlike planets

Scientists discover live bacteria in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Whillans

American scientists finish drilling down to the subglacial Lake Whillans, which is buried around 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) under the Antarctic ice

10 February NASA's Curiosity Mars rover uses its onboard drill to obtain the first deep rock sample ever retrieved from the surface of another plane

15 February A 10-ton meteoroid impacts in Chelyabinsk, Russia, producing a powerful shockwave and injuring over 1,000 people

28 February

Astronomers make the first direct observation of a protoplanet forming in a disk of gas and dust around a distant sta

A third radiation belt is discovered around the Eart

1 March – Boston Dynamics demonstrates an updated version of its BigDog military robot

3 March – American scientists report that they have cured HIV in an infant by giving the child a course of antiretroviral drugs very early in its life. The previously HIV-positive child has reportedly exhibited no HIV symptoms since its treatment, despite having no further medication for a year

researchers replace 75 percent of an injured patient's skull with a precision 3D-printed polymer replacement implant. In future, damaged bones may routinely be replaced with custom-manufactured implants

7 March

A study concludes that heart disease was common among ancient mummies

11 March

12 March NASA's Curiosity rover finds evidence that conditions on Mars were once suitable for microbial life after analyzing the first drilled sample of Martian rock, "John Klein" rock at Yellowknife Bay in Gale Crater. The rover detected water, carbon dioxide, oxygen, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, chloromethane and dichloromethane. Related tests found results consistent with the presence of smectite clay minerals

14 March CERN scientists confirm, with a very high degree of certainty, that a new particle identified by the Large Hadron Collider in July 2012 is the long-sought Higgs boson

18 March

NASA reports evidence from the Curiosity rover on Mars of mineral hydration, likely hydrated calcium sulfate, in several rock samples, including the broken fragments of "Tintina" rock and "Sutton Inlier" rock as well as in the veins and nodules in other rocks like "Knorr" rock and "Wernicke" rock.[177] Analysis using the rover's DAN instrument provided evidence of subsurface water, amounting to as much as 4% water content, down to a depth of 60 cm

27 March – A potential new weight loss method is discovered, after a 20% weight reduction was achieved in mice simply by having their gut microbes altered.

NASA scientists report that hints of dark matter may have been detected by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station

3 April

15 April A functional lab-grown kidney is successfully transplanted into a live rat in Massachusetts General Hospital

18 April – NASA announces the discovery of three new Earthlike exoplanets – Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f, and Kepler-69c – in the habitable zones of their respective host stars, Kepler-62 and Kepler-69. The new exoplanets, which are considered prime candidates for possessing liquid water and thus potentially life, were identified using the Kepler spacecraft

21 April The Antares rocket, a commercial launch vehicle developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation, successfully conducts its maiden flight

After years of unpowered glide tests, Scaled Composites' SpaceShipTwo hybrid spaceplane successfully conducts its first rocket-powered fligh

29 April

1 May IBM scientists release A Boy and His Atom, the smallest stop-motion animation ever created, made by manipulating individual carbon monoxide molecules with a scanning tunnelling microscope

A new study finds that children whose parents suck on their pacifiers have fewer allergies later in life

NASA reports that a reaction wheel on the Kepler space observatory may be malfunctioning and may result in the premature termination of the observatory's search for Earth-like

15 May

16 May Water dating back 2.6 billion years, by far the oldest ever found, is discovered in a Canadian mine

27 May Four-hundred-year-old bryophyte specimens left behind by retreating glaciers in Canada are brought back to life in the laboratory

29 May

Russian scientists announce the discovery of mammoth blood and well-preserved muscle tissue from an adult female specimen in Siberia

A new treatment to "reset" the immune system of multiple sclerosis patients is reported to reduce their reactivity to myelin by 50 to 75 percent

4 June

During the Shenzhou 10 mission, Chinese astronauts deliver the country's first public video broadcast from the orbiting Tiangong-1 space laboratory

20 June

China's Shenzhou 10 manned spacecraft returns safely to Earth, having conducted China's longest manned space mission to date

26 June

20 June

20 June

6 July

Scientists report that a wide variety of microbial life exists in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Vostok, which has been buried in ice for around 15 million years. Samples of the lake's water obtained by drilling were found to contain traces of DNA from over 3,000 tiny organisms

15 July

ASA engineers successfully test a rocket engine with a fully 3D-printed injector

19 July

NASA scientists publish the results of a new analysis of the atmosphere of Mars, reporting a lack of methane around the landing site of the Curiosity rover

Earth is photographed from the outer solar system. NASA's Cassini spacecraft releases images of the Earth and Moon taken from the orbit of Saturn

29 July – Astronomers discover the first exoplanet orbiting a brown dwarf, 6,000 light years from Earth

exoplanet

7 January

Astronomers

report that "at least 17 billion" Earth-sized exoplanets are estimated to reside in the Milky Way Galaxy

20 February

NASA reports the discovery of Kepler-37b, the smallest exoplanet yet known, around the size of Earth's Moon

10 June

Scientists report that the earlier claims of an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, a star close to our Solar System, may not be supported by astronomical evidence

25 June – In an unprecedented discovery, astronomers detect three potentially Earthlike exoplanets orbiting a single star in the Gliese 667

11 July For the first time, astronomers determine the true colour of a distant exoplanet. HD 189733 b, a searing-hot gas giant, is said to be a vivid blue colour, most likely due to clouds of silica in its atmosphere

NASA announces that the failing Kepler space observatory may never fully recover. New missions are being considered

15 August

Phase I clinical trials of SAV001 – the first and only preventative HIV vaccine – have been successfully completed with no adverse effects in all patients. Antibody production was greatly boosted after vaccination

3 September

12 September NASA announces that Voyager I has officially left the Solar System, having travelled since 1977

NASA scientists report the Mars Curiosity rover detected "abundant, easily accessible" water (1.5 to 3 weight percent) in soil samples

26 September

In addition, the rover found two principal soil types: a fine-grained mafic type and a locally derived, coarse-grained felsic type

mafic

as associated with hydration of the amorphous phases of the soi

perchlorates, the presence of which may make detection of life-related organic molecules difficult, were found at the Curiosity rover landing site

earlier at the more polar site of the Phoenix lander) suggesting a "global distribution of these salts

Astronomers have created the first cloud map of an exoplanet, Kepler-7b

30 September

8 October The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to François Englert and Peter Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider"

16 October Russian authorities raise a large fragment, 654 kg (1,440 lb) total weight, of the Chelyabinsk meteor, a Near-Earth asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere over Russia on 15 February 2013, from the bottom of Chebarkul lake.

Researchers have shown that a fundamental reason for sleep is to clean the brain of toxins. This is achieved by brain cells shrinking to create gaps between neurons, allowing fluid to wash through

17 October

22 October – Astronomers have discovered the 1,000th known exoplanet

4 November - Astronomers report, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy

11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting sun-like stars

5 November – India launches its first Mars probe, Mangalyaan

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has made the first discovery of very high energy neutrinos on Earth which had originated from beyond our Solar System

21 November

1 December – China launches the Chang'e 3 lunar rover mission, with a planned landing on December 16

3 December – The Hubble Space Telescope has found evidence of water in the atmospheres of five distant exoplanets: HD 209458b, XO-1b, WASP-12b, WASP-17b and WASP-19b

9 December NASA scientists report that the planet Mars had a large freshwater lake (which could have been a hospitable environment for microbial life) based on evidence from the Curiosity rover studying Aeolis Palus near Mount Sharp in Gale Crater

12 December NASA announces, based on studies with the Hubble Space Telescope, that water vapor plumes were detected on Europa, moon of Jupiter

14 December – The unmanned Chinese lunar rover Chang'e 3 lands on the Moon, making China the third country to achieve a soft landing there

18 December

nomers have spotted what appears to be the first known "exomoon", located 1,800 light years away

20 December – NASA reports that the Curiosity rover has successfully upgraded, for the third time since landing, its software programs and is now operating with version 11. The new software is expected to provide the rover with better robotic arm and autonomous driving abilities. Due to wheel wear, a need to drive more carefully, over the rough terrain the rover is currently traveling on its way to Mount Sharp, was also reported

simian immunodeficiency virus, or SIV, which causes AIDS in monkeys

it is hoped an HIV-form of the vaccine candidate can soon be tested in humans

approach involves the use of cytomegalovirus, or CMV, a common virus already carried by a large percentage of the population

the researchers discovered that pairing CMV with SIV had a unique effect

a modified version of CMV engineered to express SIV proteins generates and indefinitely maintains so-called "effector memory" T-cells that are capable of searching out and destroying SIV-infected cells

About 50 percent of monkeys given highly pathogenic SIV after being vaccinated with this vaccine became infected with SIV but over time eliminated all trace of SIV from the body

vaccine mobilized a T-cell response that was able to overtake the SIV invaders in 50 percent of the cases treated

testing suggests SIV was banished from the host

lab is now investigating the possible reasons why only a subset of the animals treated had a positive response in hopes that the effectiveness of the vaccine candidate can be further boosted