StemCell Therapy

Early treatment with antiretroviral therapy, an HIV drug not usually administered right after birth, can help babies born with the virus that infects 300-500 infants in sub-Saharan Africa every day, Boston doctors have determined.

We find that ART initiation within hours after birth is doable and translates into multiple benefits for the infants lower frequencies of reservoir cells and improved immune responses, said corresponding author of the study published in Science Translational Medicine, Dr. Mathias Lichterfeld, associate infectious disease physician at Brigham and Womens Hospital.

Antiretroviral therapy is a combination of at least three drugs that are highly effective at suppressing HIV and stopping its progression.

The therapy is not typically given to babies right after birth, but new research shows the number of infected cells in HIV-positive babies given the treatment within days or hours of birth was extremely small compared to infected infants who started treatment later.

What excites me most about this work is that making a comparatively small change in the timing of treatment may have a large impact on long-term treatment outcomes, said Lichterfeld.

The study was conducted in two major maternity hospitals in the Francistown and Gaborone regions of Botswana, a country with the third-highest HIV-1 prevalence in the world.

HIV progresses much faster in infants than in adults because of their weaker immune systems.

Infants enrolled in the study began treatment right after birth and researchers compared their results to those of infants not in the study who received the drug within a median of four months after birth. The babies were then followed for two years with blood sampling at regular intervals.

The study was small and focused on 10 HIV-positive babies that were enrolled. A total of 40 infants have been recruited into the study and samples from the remaining babies are now being analyzed.

A new clinical trial has also been started with some of the same infants in which a different treatment is being evaluated.

As of June, an estimated 24.5 million people globally were accessing antiretroviral therapy, according to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS.

Antiretroviral therapy does not cure HIV, but helps infected patients live longer and healthier lives. It also reduces the risk of HIV transmission by lessening the amount of the virus in the body, which in turn gives the immune system a chance to recover.

Nearly 38 million people across the globe were living with HIV as of last year and about 8 million didnt know they were infected.

See the article here:
Boston docs: Early treatment helps African babies with HIV - Boston Herald

This entry was posted on November 30, 2019 at 6:44 pm and is filed under Immune System. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |