When UCLA pediatrician Yvonne Bryson reported last year that an HIV-infected child in her care had somehow rid himself of the virus, skeptics said the boy had probably never been infected and that her early tests had been contaminated by a virus from some other source. But now a new and larger study of children exposed to HIV in the womb supports Bryson’s startling claim. Epidemiologist Marie-Louise Newell of London’s Institute of Child Health and her colleagues have identified six children who were born with the virus but who have apparently succeeded in somehow casting it out.
All babies born to HIV-positive women inherit maternal antibodies to the virus. Only some 15 to 25 percent, though, are actually infected with HIV--these will eventually develop AIDS and die. The other 75 to 85 percent lose the antibodies 9 to 18 months after birth. For these babies, a positive HIV-antibody test is ...
