Four babies born to HIV-positive mothers appear to have been cured of the infection.
The infants, born to mothers whose viruses were not fully supressed with medication during pregnancy, were all given high doses of three antiretroviral drugs within 72 hours of birth — but authorities can't be sure of the permanency of the cure until they risk re-infection.
"Our findings suggest that starting combination treatment within 72 hours of birth may significantly reduce the amount of HIV in the body," said the Hospital for Sick Children's Physician in Infectious Diseases and lead author Dr Ari Bitnun.
"However, stopping treatment may be the only way to determine whether these patients have in fact been cured."
A team of Canadian scientists from the Hospital for Sick Children, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO), Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center (CHU Sainte-Justine), and Université de Montréal studied whether early intervention in infants at risk of developing the infection lead to better outcomes than waiting for confirmation that the virus was present.
The researchers found that the size of HIV reservoir in the blood was reduced to undetectable levels in some HIV-infected children, but are wary of removing them from medication because it is too soon to tell whether they have been functionally cured.
Of the 136 children who received treatment doses of combination antiretroviral therapy within 72 hours of birth, 12 were confirmed to be infected with HIV, of which eight had showed ongoing evidence of active infection due to waning adherence to therapy and the remaining four have maintained an undetectable viral load for three to seven years.
In three of the four — who were also found to have genetic markers that have been associated with better HIV control in adults — no latent virus could be detected, while it presented in almost undetectable levels in the fourth.
"What is very important for the families of children living with HIV to remember is that this research, while very exciting, is still in its early stages and any talk of a cure for HIV is premature," cautioned staff physician at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Dr Jason Brophy.
"We would not want families to become so excited about these findings that they stop their child's medications without consulting their physician."
The study was initiated following reports that an HIV-infected infant in Mississippi had been apparently cured of the virus following the same early combination treatment.
Their findings were published in Clinical Infectious Diseases and will be presented at the AIDS 2014 conference in Melbourne later this month.