Courtesy of aids.gov

This is one of those great hold-your-breath moments…

Could we have found a cure to Aids?

The world is watching Mississippi as doctors reported on Sunday night that they cured a toddler born with HIV. 

The girl was born two and a half years ago to a mother who was unaware of her HIV status. She was immediately tested for HIV after being born prematurely, and was placed on an “aggressive treatment” plan within 30 hours. 

Though the test results showed positive, her virus had nearly disappeared.

The treatment continued off and on until she stopped receiving medication at eighteen months. Half a year later, she returned for a check-up and the virus was still untraceable.

This is not the first case of a functional cure — a middle-aged man from Berlin named Timothy Brown was cured of HIV when he received a bone-marrow transplant for leukemia. His donor who was genetically immune to the virus.

After the results are confirmed, the next step is for doctors to replicate the treatment. Approximately 3 million children currently live with HIV. Most of the 330,000 children born with HIV were born in poor countries, where only 60% of infected mothers receive prenatal treatment. 

In the words of Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health,

You could call this about as close to a cure, if not a cure, that we’ve seen.