A heartbreaking setback for a baby who doctors had said they “cured” of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.  After more than two years off of anti-viral therapy, the virus has not only returned to detectable levels, but showed signs of damaging her immune system.  There is, however, hope for her long-term survival.

“It felt very much like a punch to the gut,” said Dr. Hannah Gay of the University of Mississippi, who has been treating the child known only as “the Mississippi Baby”.

The baby was born to a mother who learned she was HIV-positive during pregnancy.  By the time it was discovered, doctors had no time for a prenatal attack on the virus.  They commenced anti-viral therapy a few hours after labor, and it seemed to work. 

“Certainly, this is a disappointing turn of events for this young child, the medical staff involved in the child's care and the HIV/AIDS research community,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infection Diseases. 

The baby continued to receive treatment until she was 18 months old, but the family stopped coming to appointments at hospital.  At one point, doctors tried bringing in social workers to help locate them, but the family showed up again in March of this year, and the girl – now a small child – still had no detectable levels of HIV.  It wasn’t until the latest tests last week that the virus came roaring back.

“The fact that this child was able to remain off anti-retroviral treatment for two years and maintain quiescent virus for that length of time is unprecedented,” said Deborah Persaud, professor of infectious diseases at the John Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore and one of the two pediatric HIV experts involved in the ongoing analysis of the case.  “Typically, when treatment is stopped, HIV levels rebound within weeks, not years.”

The latest tests are not a death sentence.  Doctors have resumed anti-viral therapy, which they say the young girl will need for quite some time.  In theory, she could live well into her 30s or 40s.  Or maybe the cure will be found sometime in those decades.

In 2013, a second child was born in Long Beach, California to a woman who doctors knew was not taking her HIV medication.  The infant was treated immediately and the virus is now barely detectable.

The first and so far only man to be cured of AIDS was “The Berlin Patient” – Mr. Timothy Brown of San Francisco in 2006.  He went through a harrowing and prohibitively expensive procedure in which doctors replaced his bone marrow with that from a donor who carried a genetic mutation that protects people from HIV.  Brown is alive and well, and virus free.