The mother had a premature vaginal delivery, so the baby was high-risk for contracting HIV, Gay said. Gay started the baby on more than one drug to reduce risk of infection and within a couple of days, tests showed up HIV positive. “So the baby actually had the infection before delivery,” she said. The infant underwent remission of the HIV infection after receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) within 30 hours of birth — Zidovudine, Lamivudine and Nevirapine. A series of tests showed progressively diminishing viral presence in the infant’s blood until it reached undetectable levels 29 days after birth. Gay switched Nevirapine with Kaletra for long term therapy. The infant remained on antiviral drugs until 18 months of age, then became hard to follow up with for a while and stopped treatment. Ten months after discontinuation of treatment, the child underwent repeated standard blood tests, none of which detected HIV presence in the blood.
Baby is 2 1/2 years old now, no signs of the virus.
This post was edited on 3/3 at 5:26 pm