U.S.-based Guyanese doctor leads cure of baby born with HIV

By Vishnu Bisram –

An American baby born in Mississippi and infected with the AIDS virus has been cured of the virus thanks to treatment received from a Guyanese doctor, Deborah Persaud.
Dr. Persaud hails from West Coast Demerara.  She received her medical degree from New York University in 1985 and did her residency at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan.

Dr Persaud is a specialist in Pediatric Infectious Disease Medicine and is Board Certified in Pediatrics. She had lived in the greater Richmond Hill area before relocating to Baltimore to work at the John Hopkins Child Center where she serves as head of Virology at the medical center.
Dr. Persaud has made news worldwide and has been featured on major TV networks. She presented her findings at a conference in Florida where she explained how she was successful at curing the baby of HIV. She said the baby who was infected with the virus received immediate treatment.
Dr. Persaud told reporters at the conference that “it is a functional cure meaning the virus isn’t entirely gone, but it’s not doing any damage, either”.
Dr. Persaud said she and other doctors who worked on the study think “this was because they began therapy for the baby within 48 hours of being infected”.
“What we have identified is what we think is the first well-documented case of a functional cure in a neonatal child,” she told reporters.
Reports say the child, who lives in rural Mississippi, is now 2 1/2 and healthy.
“She was, like so many, born to a mother who didn’t know until right before she gave birth that she had the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS”, said reports.
According to Dr. Persaud, both mother and baby got a standard dose of HIV drugs right away – something that has been shown to prevent what’s known as mother-to-child transmission of the virus in newborns.
The reports say: “The baby was a little premature and had to stay in the hospital. Within 30 hours of birth she was re-tested and had clear evidence of HIV infection. Unusually, she then got a cocktail of three drugs at a dose normally reserved for more advanced cases”.
Dr. Persaud said the cocktail worked really well – pushing the baby’s virus down to what is called undetectable levels. She said: “This is what doctors want with HIV, because if the virus can’t be found in the blood, then it can’t be spreading and damaging the immune system. HIV doesn’t kill directly – it kills patients by damaging their immune systems so bad they can’t fight off other infections”.
The cure has medical personnel talking whether a cure for adults with HIV is possible.
“From a clinical perspective, this means that if you can get an infected baby on to  antiretroviral drugs immediately after delivery, it’s going to be possible to prevent or reverse the infection – essentially cure the baby,” said Dr. Steven Deeks, an HIV/AIDS researcher at the University of California at San Francisco in a report on NBC.
Deeks and others hailed the findings of Dr. Persaud and other doctors as a great stride in the search for a cure for babies born infected with HIV. But the researchers said they also suggest the need for better ways to diagnose HIV infection, a process that typically takes  up to six weeks. “This could have a profound effect on how we approach babies born to HIV-infected moms,” Deeks said.
Since her discovery of a child’s cure, John Hopkins has given her a contract and grant for further research.